


It's All Been Done

by alchemy



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-07
Updated: 2008-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-10 10:44:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemy/pseuds/alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following a horrific year at the hands of his nemesis, the Doctor finds himself victorious but once again alone, having been left by his latest companion, Martha. With entirely too much time to think on all the ways that he could and should have done things differently, he ultimately relents to his impulses and seeks Martha out in an attempt to set some things right. What he doesn't expect, however, is how he'd feel upon seeing her, or her conviction to make him earn her time and attention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rhi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhi/gifts).



> Old fic that I'm adding here for the sake of archiving. Written mostly in the Fall of 2007, following series three of _Doctor Who_ and well before we had any idea of what had happened to Martha. Unbetaed and permanently incomplete, alas. My original notes:
>
>> This is a much-delayed Christmas gift for rhipowered. I wrote the bulk of it for NaNoWriMo 2007, which is why it's so long and more in the style of a novel than fanfic. The title and inspiration for the story came from the Barenaked Ladies song of the same name. Thanks to Kevin Smith and Cameron Crowe for the inspiration for two specific lines.

> It is a wonderful advantage to a man, in every pursuit or avocation, to secure an adviser in a sensible woman. In woman there is at once a subtle delicacy of tact and a plain soundness of judgment which are rarely combined to an equal degree in man.
> 
> A woman, if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing; for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you.
> 
> -The Earl of Lytton (1831-91)

> Always make new mistakes.
> 
> -Esther Dyson

When it comes to Time Lords, there is no barometer. No standard of measure, no comparison to help the infinitely less-complex human brain comprehend them. They are a species entirely to themselves, and what's more, they are one of the universe's most endangered species, at that. The old descriptive standby, "imagine if you will" is null and void, here. You, as a human being, cannot imagine it accurately anymore than you can comprehend being another animal entirely. While the Time Lord genus shares many of the traits of a human, the two should never be confused.

Such a singular, pedigreed race, whittled down to one last example -- A lone man, typically judged the best or worst example of what Gallifrey had to offer the universe, depending upon whom you asked. To be him, the last of his kind -- The last of the Time Lords -- could only be like the most acute type of mortal epiphany. In a race so revered for its ability to stave off death, being the very last could only be a complete mind fuck, and that's without knowing you're the reason all the others are gone.

Guilt was not a trait especially associated with Time Lords, although you might have thought so with the particular talent the Doctor had for it. This version of the Doctor, anyhow, as the others didn't have quite the same knack for emotional masochism. For this, his Tenth body, Tenth awareness, Tenth personality, it came as naturally as breathing, that impenetrable sense of regret that things could not have gone differently. Not simply with the end of Gallifrey, but anything of emotional significance done in this lifetime or another. To the untrained eye it leant the appearance of depth, but more and more he suspected it had to do with stoking his own sense of importance. This version of himself had a penchant for pretension disguised as benevolence. Being the last of the Time Lords was conducive to it.

Reflecting on any sort of emotional ties or feelings was therefore doomed to be an affair mired in self-condemnation, and as a general rule, the Doctor avoided it completely. Better to be on the go, really, than think about what was done and over. Typically, it worked. Typically, he could shut not only other people but himself out with all the finesse of a pro, but things were different now. The world had changed, and he with it, but when the world leapt back, there was no way to rewind his psyche. The damage, as they say, had been done, and within the space of a year, held hostage by his most loathed and loved enemy, the Doctor had very little to do but think.

Habits are habits, you see, and regardless of the saying, new ones are just as tenacious as old.

With three hundred sixty-five days to ponder, you might contemplate a great many things. The Doctor spent most of that time contemplating Martha Jones, because even in an expansive mind filled with a great many more things than you or I could fathom, she still seemed the most important, and rightly so. She was.

Headstrong, determined and so very loyal, it was no surprise to the Doctor that Martha Jones was not only capable of saving the world, but that she did. Saved him, too, as a matter of fact, and if that can't humble the last of the Time Lords, nothing can. He should have done more, said more, because really, what are words in comparison to that sort of sacrifice? She'd walked the Earth for an entire year, would never be the same, and that deserved more than simple recognition of the act. Still, he'd slighted her, there at the end. Unintentional though it was, he couldn't blame her for leaving.

Trouble was he couldn't stop thinking about her. A whole year he'd gone, imagining Martha, meditating on Martha, remembering Martha in every possible context, and now with the year snuffed out of existence and Martha well and gone, he couldn't not think about Martha. It was a sad state of affairs, he decided, when a Time Lord was obsessed with his ex-companion. Probably his own fault for choosing humans; next time, he'd go with another species. Something with fur, maybe, but not cats. He'd had enough of cats.

Perhaps it had to do with the way she'd left. A mobile phone tossed casually his way, with a directive to come running when she called. Of course he'd agreed -- What else could he do, under the circumstances? -- but in retrospect he recognized it less as emergency protocol and more as a leash. Martha Jones, petite with honeyed skin and flyaway smiles, never as innocuous as she seemed, had put the Doctor on a leash, and he'd gone willingly. The beauty of the situation was how inherently artless it all was -- The Doctor knew she'd had no concept of what she was actually doing to him.

The telephone stayed with him at all times, tucked into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, over his left heart. He found the ever-present weight of it comforting, although he suspected if it ever did ring, it would startle the hell out of him. At odd moments when he was alone, or deep in thought, he found his hand creeping up to his chest to feel the outline of it through the heavy fabric, as if he were preparing to pledge allegiance to something. It had taken nearly three months for him to accept the idea that he was waiting on the phone to ring, and another month and a half to reconcile himself with the idea that he wanted it to. Nearly a year later, it was beginning to dawn on him that it might not.

Just now, he was to a point where during any free moments he had (Which were, admittedly, not all that many, for all that he excelled at pushing aside his personal problems by staying busy) he was constantly having to restrain himself from pulling out the mobile and calling Martha himself. The best argument he had thus far for avoiding that dubious task was that he had no idea at all what he might say. “Oh, hullo Martha, I just thought I’d ring after a year, to catch up.” It sounded so trite, and not at all what he wanted to say anyhow, although he still wasn’t certain exactly what that was. He’d begun to have entire conversations with the telephone, which he regarded as something of a nemesis (A poor replacement for the Master, all said, but almost as manipulative), in which he detailed his myriad reasons for not doing what it clearly wanted him to, which was ring Martha Jones. It was during one of these conversations that the Doctor decided he could use some advice on the matter from someone less inanimate.


	2. Chapter 2

Torchwood Three was a dank, dark substructure located under the Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff Bay. It had an ominous, filthy sort of feel to it even beneath the institutional lighting, and Jack Harkness fit it like a glove. Jack was tall, dark and solidly-built, with an apple pie smile and the sort of oozing charm you wanted to be disgusted in but never quite could. The quintessential American transplant in spite of not even being from Earth, he wore vintage military fashion and swished about in a long overcoat as if he owned anywhere he happened to be. It was interesting, the Doctor thought, that Jack managed to channel John Wayne when he went gadding about in the coat, but he himself always felt a bit like an underfed bat in his own trench. Or perhaps that was only when in Jack’s company.

Jack’s smile was at least one hundred and twenty watts, and was currently turned on the Doctor like a great, toothy searchlight. The Doctor squinted from his place by the door, already beginning to wish he’d stayed in the TARDIS. At least it was dry.

“The others will be sorry they missed you,” Jack informed him, speaking of his small collection of hand-picked staff. The Doctor had only met one of them, but knowing Jack, had half-expected to find them all tangled together in some sort of orgy when he showed up. Jack had an affinity for the debauched.

“Not if you don’t tell them I was here,” was the Doctor’s absent reply, his right hand rubbing at the back of his neck for lack of employment doing anything else.

“Touché,” Jack laughed – Jack was nearly always laughing, it seemed – and motioned for the Doctor to follow him through the cluttered maze of what the group at Torchwood Three colloquially called the Hub. Nearly everywhere there seemed to be a reminder of where exactly they were; “Torchwood” painted in regal black letters on the cracked tile over a threadbare sofa, the honeycomb “T” logo emblazoned across idling computer terminals and etched into windows. It was all a bit gauche, the Doctor thought, but then again, so was Torchwood and so was Jack.

In the relative comfort of Jack’s office, the Doctor accepted the tumbler of whisky offered him, and sank bonelessly into a worn leather chair. “Nice place you have here,” he remarked before taking his first sip. Because they both knew he was being facetious, Jack refrained from comment on it.

“So,” he said instead, never one to beat around the proverbial bush. “What’s up?” Sitting behind that massive mahogany desk of his with his fingers steepled, for the first time he appeared to the Doctor like the leader he actually was. The effect was startling for all that it shifted the Doctor’s world view, but not unpleasant.

“Martha,” the Doctor said, having decided to simply have out with it, although he immediately required a second sip of Glenfiddich.

“Oh really?” Jack asked with polite interest, and it was more than a little unsettling how utterly unruffled he was. The Doctor had expected an inquiry after her safety, at the very least.

“Yes, really,” he replied with a petulant downwards tug of his mouth, and stared at the amber liquid in his glass. Irritatingly, Jack laughed again.

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that, Doc,” he shot back, although there was a certain mischievous glint to his eyes that suggested he suspected well enough. It made the Doctor want to feign indifference just to prevent the smug look that was sure to follow. “You’ve not talked to her for a year.”

The Doctor’s head jerked up at that, his brown eyes blinking indignantly at Jack. “How do you know that?” Torchwood was, comparatively, pretty good with keeping track of alien activity, but not that good.

“She would have mentioned it,” was Jack’s blithe reply.

“You talk to her?”

“Of course I talk to her,” Jack laughed.

The Doctor, immediately realizing what a silly question it had been, attempted to cover for it with tacked-on clarification. “Regularly, I mean. Don’t look at me that way, London’s a long way from Cardiff.”

“When did distance ever matter to you?” Jack snorted, fingertips tapping idly against his glass. “And who else does she have to talk to? You think Francine and Clive honestly have any idea of what she went through?” As he settled back into the embrace of his arm chair, there was a visible shift to Jack’s expression; honesty didn’t come naturally to or particularly suit him, and as such sat upon his boyish features like a sore thumb. “She worked here, awhile.”

If the revelation of his past companions talking to each other was a surprise, this new bit of information hit the Doctor like a gong. He blinked several times at Jack, as if dizzy. “What?” he blurted, having lost all finesse in the wake of imagining Jack and Martha working alone together in close quarters. With Jack, it was always close quarters.

“She worked for me,” Jack repeated, rocking his chair back with a low squeak. That he hadn’t laughed the Doctor off was a little unsettling, as was the now-obvious shift in his demeanor. “She needed something to do for awhile,” he continued, and his blue eyes were dark and sharp as slate in the low glow from the desk lamp. “The hospital wasn’t enough. You know how it is.”

The Doctor knew how it was. Perhaps not as astutely as Jack Harkness, but the concept didn’t escape him. Upon consideration, it made perfect sense, and he had no idea why it hadn’t occurred to him before, or why the idea of Martha with Jack seemed to make everything within him want to revolt. “So, the two of you worked together,” he concluded, looking wholly unsettled behind his whisky glass.

That set Jack to laughing again, and it struck the Doctor not for the first time how it could seem either the most jolly sound in the universe or the most irritating, depending upon the moment. “That’s what it is, then,” Jack speculated, and gave his head a bemused shake. “You know, there was a time I would have been jealous, but-“ Another laugh echoed half-restrained at the back of his throat. “Well, like I said. She worked here awhile.”

“What what is?” the Doctor returned, although they both knew he wasn’t nearly dense enough to have missed the insinuation. Had it been anyone other than Jack, feigning ignorance might have worked, but as it was, he was coming off a bit like a sulking child, simultaneously annoyed at Jack for being able to read him so well, and jealous as hell that he’d forged a relationship with Martha in his absence. Gifted in the art of diversion, Jack ignored him and pressed on.

“You want her back,” he surmised, and took the first sip from his glass, a reward for ferreting out that bit of truth. “And she wants to come back.”

“She does?”

“Of course she does. We all do. In nine hundred years, I’d have thought you would have caught onto that by now.”

“Nine hundred sixteen, actually.”

“The point is, it’s a damned long time to overlook something like that.” The Doctor was unappreciative of the chastisement and looked it. Jack continued on. “We would all love to do that again, and she wants to. Don’t let her tell you any differently. She didn’t leave because she was unhappy.”

“What would you call it, then?” the Doctor asked, haughty to save face and wondering precisely how much Martha had shared with Jack.

“Self-preservation.”

The Doctor knew how that was, too, and not for the first time it struck him what a vicious cycle he was fostering: He pushes away Martha to avoid the emotional mess, she instinctively does the same back to him. Staring unfocused across the landscape of knick knacks on Jack’s well-polished desk, he understood why he’d come there in the first place.

“Yeah,” he sighed, and blinked to focus again before swinging his gaze back up to Jack. “But that’s just semantics, isn’t it? Maybe she didn’t leave because she was unhappy, but she still left because she wasn’t happy- Is this crystal?” In an exemplary show of forced attention deficit, he began studying the glass in his hand as if it were the Hope Diamond and not an everyday tumbler.

“I really don’t know; Ianto would have bought them. Listen, Doctor-“ Jack sat forward, his attention unswayed from the topic of Martha Jones. The Doctor had dipped a fingertip down into the scotch and was circling the rim of the glass with it. When it began to hum, he looked back up to Jack with a wide, triumphant grin.

“It’s crystal!” he declared, as if it made any sort of difference to anything at all. “Brilliant stuff, crystal. Add a bit of lead to glass, increase the light refraction, and you’ve got a commodity. You know who absolutely loved lead crystal? Louis XVIII. Baccarat was making some beautiful specimens back then-“

Jack’s stare remained unwavering and far too somber for comfort, and the Doctor’s chatter ceased. He looked mildly abashed, and cleared his throat to indicate he was finished.

“If you can’t give her what she wants, don’t go,” Jack warned him, and the tone of his voice made it clear that the time for dancing around the subject was well and over. “She loved you -- Loves you – and had the guts to say it and walk away for the sake of her own sanity. I don’t know how she did it, I couldn’t have. I would have stayed in that damned ship and pined after you for the rest of eternity, if you’d have let me.”

That put things well in perspective, even if the Doctor was fully aware of Jack’s propensity for exaggeration. He wouldn’t have stayed, would he? Jack was made of stronger stuff than that, surely. They all were; it was why he chose them in the first place.

“Don’t take that away from her,” Jack added, depositing his glass on the desktop with a satisfying thud. He’d only taken the one sip.

“I miss her,” the Doctor quietly admitted, the words out of his mouth before he realized he was saying them; before he realized he even felt them. It was no small admission, coming from him, on par with the big, bad L word. Thinking about what he’d lost was difficult and counter-productive, not to mention vulnerable. Jack nodded, aware enough to know what it meant.

“She misses you, too. Tries to not admit it, but you get a few drinks in her and she invariably pulls that damned key out of her shirt and starts staring at it.”

“She still wears the key?”

Jack made a vague motion with one hand. “It’s a thing. She used to have some pretty bad anxiety attacks when she took it off. God, that used to piss her off. You know how analytical she can be. She hated that she couldn’t help it, thought it was ridiculous.”

If that information was designed to deter the Doctor from visiting Martha, it was doing a bang-up job of it. By that point, the guilt of it all was like an old friend. “I at least owe her an apology, Jack,” he sighed, rubbing at his eyes with one long-fingered hand.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Jack conceded, and neglected to mention that the Doctor owed quite a lot of people apologies, not the least of whom was himself. “But don’t go in there acting like you have no idea what’s going on. You know how she feels. Don’t fuck her over in some misguided attempt to make yourself feel less guilty.”

“I’m not going to fuck her over!” the Doctor protested, suddenly energized out of his emotional torpor.

“So you’re just going to fuck her,” Jack surmised.

“WHAT?!”

Jack smirked, back to his smarmy self again. “Well, it’s an option.”


	3. Chapter 3

Thomas Howell was a fairly attractive young man of twenty-six, tall with short dark hair and a gentle gaze that contrasted his muscled physique. Over the past year, Dr Martha Jones had come to know him far better than she wanted to, and she was intensely dismayed to discover he was back at Royal Hope Hospital again today.

“He asked for you,” Maria informed her with a vaguely sympathetic look as she handed over the chart. “Should I call psych?”

“No,” Martha immediately replied, her eyes carefully trained on the chart rather than Maria’s face, in spite of knowing the information by heart. “I’ll talk to him.”

The nurse, who had been watching Martha with the hopeful eye of a vulture surveying a well-traveled piece of interstate, looked rather crestfallen when the doctor tucked the chart neatly under her arm and walked away without another word. The staff had a pool going just now, about the mysterious Dr Jones, and information was precious. Martha was as tight-lipped and impenetrable as any nun, and gave them very little to go by beyond what they’d seen on the news a year ago. Somehow, she had been involved in the business with the Prime Minister going mad, but she’d never volunteer personal information of any kind, and inquiries were met with the sort of sharp, icy stare that was warning enough to deter any further questions.

Maria trailed casually after Martha, thinking to listen in on the conversation in Exam Two. She was met with a door in her face. After sufficient cursing under her breath, she abandoned her surveillance and returned to the admitting desk.

 

It was clear enough that Howell recognized Martha immediately, perking up on his gurney, those sweet eyes suddenly bright with memory. “Martha Jones,” he exhaled, the name reverent, as if it were the prelude to a hymn. It broke her heart to hear it. “Thank God I found you.”

“Hello, Mr. Howell,” Martha returned with a polite smile, fingers clamped hard against the manila folder that held his chart.

“They’ve been telling me I’m mad, that none of it ever happened. But I knew, I just knew, that if I found you, I could prove them wrong, and here you are. Martha Jones. _The_ Martha Jones-“

“It’s Dr Jones now, Thomas,” she replied, abandoning all pretense in light of his fervent declaration. “What have you been telling them?”

“About all of it. The Valiant, and the Toclafane, and the Master, and the Doc-“ Martha held up a hand to silence him, and managed to not wince. It was only one syllable, after all.

“You have to be careful who you tell, Thomas,” she replied, moving to perch on the edge of the bed. The position accentuated her small stature; she looked a bit like a well-endowed child, as her feet barely skimmed the floor. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

Howell looked suddenly abashed, eyes wide with apology. “You’re right, of course. I wasn’t thinking, I promise I won’t tell anyone that you’re here.” Leaning up close, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Is he here? Is the Doctor here?”

The heat of his breath stirred the fine hairs on Martha’s cheek, the sensation turning suddenly unbearable with the addition of that name. Her eyes fell closed for the space of two (Or four) heartbeats, so that she could keep herself steady and not shove Howell away in annoyance. She was the great Martha Jones, Savior of the Human Race. She wasn’t supposed to do things like that.

“No,” she answered, more curt than was entirely called for, and fixed her eyes upon him. They were her most critical feature, she’d learned; the easiest way to sway people, to incite them to trust her. Round and coffee-colored, almost cartoonish when paired with her tiny frame, and Thomas Howell had never failed to fall for their wide-eyed sincerity. “He’s not here now, but don’t worry. Everything will be okay. I’m going to give you something to help with your anxiety, Thomas, and then I’m going to take you home, all right?”

“Okay,” Thomas predictably agreed with a nod, and Martha slipped from the bed to pour him some water.

 

“Thomas Howell showed up at the hospital again.” Beating around the bush held little appeal for Martha these days, if it ever had. Seeing as how Jack’s ego was roughly the size of a small country, she imagined he could handle skipping social niceties. The pub they were in was fairly innocuous, filled with the typical mish-mash of clientele living their lives at a slow burn. Martha had never been here before, but it mattered little. The primary concern was ensuring she met Jack someplace far enough away from Royal Hope that she’d not be stumbled upon by a work colleague.

“Well, hello to you, too.” Jack’s chastisement meant exactly nothing, given that it was accompanied by his affable grin. “What’re you drinking?” he asked as he slipped into the seat directly beside Martha and leaned in to peer down at her highball glass with keen, if wholly transparent interest.

“Vodka tonic. There’s a better view of my tits from over there,” she replied, pointing an insistent finger across the table in a diplomatic attempt at getting him to move. Jack laughed her off, but moved to the indicated seat anyway.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a vodka drinker,” he remarked, and tipped his glass of lager her way.

“It’s difficult to fuck up. Thomas Howell found me at the hospital again,” she repeated.

“Ooo, dirty talk,” Jack quipped, leaning forward with a devious smirk. “You know I can’t resist it when you swear.” In spite of herself, Martha smiled, her icy demeanor cracking, and Jack gave a triumphant laugh. “There it is. I knew you were in there somewhere.”

“It’s been a long day,” she explained, as if any of the others seemed shorter.

“Long year,” Jack corrected, and Martha gave a conceding sigh. “Did you Retcon him?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how long it’s going to last, Jack. I’m afraid he’s building up a tolerance. This is the fourth time.”

“Did you try a stronger dosage?”

“No, and I’m not going to. What if he loses it all?”

Retcon was a handy, if highly illegal drug developed by Torchwood for use on its more sensitive cases. Mix a bit with some sedative, slip it into your target’s drink, and when they wake up again, they’ve forgotten all about you and their alien encounter. The trouble with it, at least to Martha’s mind, was that it was unregulated and the dosage could be tricky.

“Well, what are the alternatives?” Jack asked. “He gets locked in a nut house, or national security is breeched. Sounds to me like a good case of amnesia is the most humane option.”

“As if you give a toss about national security,” Martha scoffed and took a sip of her drink.

Jack sobered. “No one will believe him, Martha.”

“Then let him be mad. I’m not going to take the risk of an overdose. I won’t be responsible for that man losing his entire life over something I did.”

Jack balked, growing immediately concerned. “What happened wasn’t your fault.”

“I meant the overdose.” Still, Martha’s expression had clouded, and she was having difficulty holding Jack’s gaze. “It just never ends,” she quietly added. Unconsciously, she lifted her right hand to press against the fabric of her blouse over her chest. It was a movement Jack had seen her do countless times, knew that she was feeling for the key she still perpetually wore around her neck, and knew that she was completely unaware she did it.

“He came to see me,” Jack suddenly declared as he leaned back in his seat with the sort of finality that indicated they were finished with discussing their morally-questionable methods for dispatching with Thomas Howell’s memory.

“Howell?” Martha asked, looking up in surprise, her hand stilling against her chest.

“No.”

“Who?”

Jack lifted a knowing brow. It had become a thing, God only knew how, but they never said the words “the Doctor,” proper name, if they could help it. It was a habit he’d fallen into long before he’d met Martha, and was surprised to find she had acquired it, as well. He wasn’t sure if it was a general ex-companion thing or only reserved for those few who had deigned to fall in love with the Doctor and been rejected for their efforts. Or maybe it was a bit like Bloody Mary or Beetlejuice, and they were both secretly afraid that saying his name too many times would make him suddenly appear, which was simultaneously their greatest hope and greatest fear. Even the strongest ego would rather not be reminded of the one that shot them down.

“When?” Martha immediately demanded, when she realized who he meant. Jack took the offensive maneuver in stride.

“Day before yesterday. He was asking about you, actually.”

“What? Why?”

“I can only guess, really, but you should be finding out soon enough. I think he’s going to be round to see you.”

“WHAT?”

“You picked that up from him, didn’t you?” Jack asked with a low snicker, before availing himself to his beer again.

“If you’re taking the piss-“

“I’m not taking the piss, Martha. Do you think I would honestly joke about that? I might be jealous as hell, but I’m not cruel. Well, not to the people I care about, anyway.”

“So, he’s just going to, oh, I don’t know… Pop in?” Martha asked in disbelief, waving her hand in an arc that was emphatic but not especially demonstrating of “popping in.”

“Sure seems like.”

“No, no. No. He doesn’t just pop in, Jack. You know that better than anyone.”

“I think he wants to apologize.” Jack’s shoulder lifted in a nonchalant shrug.

“For what?”

“Oh, come off it,” Jack laughed. “You know exactly what for. Don’t act as if you’ve not been secretly hoping for this. Your white knight is returning to you in his big, blue box, ready to repent for his sins. It’s right out of a bad romance novel.”

“That isn’t funny,” Martha replied, her mouth pressing into a line.

“Oh, it’s hilarious,” Jack readily corrected her, and shook his head as he watched the bubbles slowly rise to the top of his glass. “You should have seen him. He actually said he misses you.”

For a long, taut pause, Martha found she couldn’t reply, had no idea what to say or even how to possibly react, and so simply stared at Jack, who seemed lost in his own thoughts. When she finally did induce her voice to work, the words were abrupt and propelled by a sudden, uncontrollable rush of emotion.

“Stop,” she warned, half growl. “Just bloody stop.”

“Stop what?” Jack asked, lifting his gaze to Martha’s stony expression. “Stop being honest? Or stop giving you hope?”

“I’m not going to do that again,” she answered, and swallowed hard. “I swore I wouldn’t do it again. I’m not her; I’m never going to be her.”

“No,” Jack agreed. “You’re not. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe he needed time.”

Martha couldn’t help but laugh at that, loud and mirthless. “Oh yeah, time. TIME. He needs more of that.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I know what you meant, and I’m saying it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re telling me that if he offered, if he apologized, you’d tell him no?”

“You did,” she pointed out with a lift of her chin. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know that I’d exactly call that an apology. ‘I decided I don’t think you’re a complete freak of nature, Jack, why don’t you come back with us?’ It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as ‘I’m sorry,’ does it?”

Martha’s expression softened, and she looked down to her glass. The ice was so melted by then there was little point in continuing to drink it, although it was no great loss. The vodka had been cheap. “That was wrong of him, Jack. I don’t think he ever really understood that, though. Sometimes I wonder if he’s spent so much time alone that his social compass is beyond repair.”

“Martha.” Jack reached across the scratched expanse of the tiny table and curled his hand warm over hers. She looked up to him, and all at once the gulf of uncertainty she was struggling with was clear in her wide eyes. “If he tells you he’s sorry, accept it. Don’t question it, don’t be stubborn or try to prove a point. Just accept it, and move on. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

It was impossible to look at Jack in that moment and not think of what he would ultimately become. A mystic, a legend, the oldest being in the universe, and still, in his final moments, it was all about the Doctor. Martha couldn’t decide if she was touched or sickened by the sentiment, and she was struck by the sudden impulse to grab Jack and insist he change things, that he make it about him, not the brilliant, fucked-up man who simultaneously enriched theirs lives and made them so difficult to live. Rules were rules, however, and beyond even the Doctor. Skewing all of time and space wasn’t on her agenda that day, and so she let it be.

“I’m not going to put him out,” she said in mild protest, eyes flicking from their hands up to Jack’s face. “I don’t hate him.” He just scared the hell out of her.

“When you’re trying to protect yourself, love can be just as bad,” Jack pointed out with a gentle squeeze of her hand. “I’m just saying; don’t cut him off before giving him a proper chance. I know you.” He paused to laugh with a shake of his head. “I know him. Not as well as the last one, but some things don’t change.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Martha admitted on a sigh. “I always thought- Well, I always thought it would be me, you know? That I would call him if I needed him, and he’d come. Those were the terms. He’s not supposed to change the terms, Jack.”

“He’s a Time Lord, Martha. They operate on their own terms because they create their own timeline.”

“Well, he needs to be more considerate and take my timeline into consideration,” Martha huffed, pulling her hand away. “I’m not ready yet.”

“You’re never going to be ready.” Suddenly intense with seriousness again, Jack leaned back across the table, holding Martha steady in his gaze. “The most important thing you can learn in this life is forgiveness, Martha. I spent a lot of time being angry at him. Hell, for the first fifty years after Satellite Five, I wanted to find him just to give him a piece of my mind. But it’s not worth it, not in the end. This isn’t about what ifs or maybes, or you loving him and him not loving you back. This is about letting it go, for both your sakes. I know how he treated you, I know. I saw it, but I lived it, too, long before you came along. Just trust me, on this one. He didn’t mean it, couldn’t help it. If he can forgive the Master, you can forgive him.”

She would, of course. They both knew she would. It was so much easier to be indignant when the Doctor wasn’t around. Easier to forget all the reasons why she’d loved him in the first place.

“Did you tell him to come see me?” she asked with a thoughtful cant of her head as she regarded Jack. It was always so difficult to get a read on his motivations.

“I told him…” Jack began, his voice trailing off into a soft chuckle. “I told him to bring rubbers.”

Martha smacked him immediately on the arm. “Oh be serious! This is a serious moment we’re having!”

“Okay, okay! No need for violence!” he laughed, shying away, out of Martha’s reach. “I told him that if he couldn’t give you what you want, to not do it.”

“What I want? How do you know what I want? How does he?”

“Well, obviously you want what every woman wants,” Jack replied with a slick little smile and a waggle of his eyebrows.

“If you say a deep dicking, I swear to God, I’m going to punch you in the nose.”

“I like my nose.”

“I know.”

“I was going to say, to be treated with respect, but I think you may be onto something with this deep dicking idea.”


	4. Chapter 4

Just before the Year that Never Was, Martha’s flat had become a casualty to the Master’s mission to find and capture the Doctor. It had been blown all to pieces in a spectacular display of shooting rubble, and left her effectively homeless after it was all over. Her sister Latisha had offered Martha temporary lodging in her small flat, and having few other options, Martha had agreed. Her private nature having been compounded by a year living on the run, Martha had begun looking for her own place almost immediately, but had opted to stay after a drowsy Tish confessed to her one night that she had nightmares and was afraid to live alone. Over a year later Martha was still installed there, a permanent roommate in a temporary living situation. There was only one bedroom, but as Martha had developed a habit of being able to sleep anywhere, the couch sufficed well enough.

It was a drowsy Tuesday afternoon, and Martha was seizing the opportunity her day off afforded her to lounge around the flat and do as little as possible. The idea had seemed good at the time, but didn’t take into account the reasons why she normally tried to stay busy. Sprawled across the couch with a bowl of chocolate ice cream, she found that slowing down her mind wasn’t nearly as simple as slowing down her body.

It had been two days since her conversation with Jack, and her focus kept slipping back to what he’d told her. Telling herself that it was all speculation and that Jack was likely mistaken helped very little. For an entire year, Martha had spent everyday thinking and talking about the Doctor, and it had turned out to be an extremely difficult habit to break.

Disgusted more with herself than the ice cream, Martha made a low groan, set the bowl aside on the coffee table and flopped back against the worn cushions of Tish’s hand-me-down sofa. There was a water stain on the ceiling, the result of a since-patched leak. At night when she was feigning sleep, the light from the lamp post outside illuminated the ceiling, and Martha would stare at the stain for hours. She could have replicated it, she thought, if anything in the world would have required her drawing the pattern of a water stain. Annoyed as she was today, simply seeing it there grated on her nerves, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

When materializing or dematerializing, the Doctor’s TARDIS made a singular sound, like metal scraping together, or gears, but more pleasant. It was innocuous enough a sound that if you didn’t know what it signified, you could completely overlook it. It seemed to carry, but that was impossible to accurately gauge given that anyone who recognized it would spend the rest of their lives with their ear bent for the sound.

With her eyes screwed shut, Martha initially believed it had been her overactive imagination, but then sat abruptly up, eyes wide with disbelief as it dawned on her that she wasn’t hearing things. What followed was quite a lot of needless running in and out of the few rooms in the flat, hastily tidying and bemoaning her appearance, as while Martha Jones was an accomplished, independent woman, she was still very much a woman, and a woman whose crush had just unexpectedly shown up outside. Play it cool, she told herself, and she felt certain she could handle that. She’d become quite good at acting.

When she pulled open the front door to find the Doctor standing there, two things immediately occurred to her. The first was that he’d not actually knocked yet. The second was that from the waist down, she was clad only in a pair of purple striped knickers and socks. For a fleeting moment, she thought to play it off as if she’d not expected to see him there, but abandoned that impulse immediately. Instead, she made an apologetic sound, frantically waved the hand not clutching the door knob, and shut the door in his face.

The Doctor hadn’t been certain how he’d be greeted when he showed up at the flat Martha shared with Tish, but had expected something less manic and involving more clothing. He stood in the hall staring at the door that had just been slammed in his face, pondering precisely what to do next, which the door was jerked open again to reveal a much calmer, less naked Martha Jones. He blinked once at her, and offered an uncertain smile.

“Sorry, I, um-“ Martha began, and then faltered, realizing that she probably didn’t need to explain. “Hi.” In spite of her rock-solid resolve to stand firm and not give an inch, her expression softened and she smiled in return, unable to completely keep her sentimentality at bay.

“Hullo,” he returned, and grinned, reckoning that the door thing was a fluke, and if he’d not been chewed out or slapped yet, it was a good sign. She looked startled, but happy enough to see him.

“Hi,” Martha repeated, laughed softly at herself, and then gave into impulse and threw her arms around his neck. Even without all the romantic silliness she’d let herself get caught up in, she missed his hugs. They were never lukewarm, the sort of hugs that really meant something, and when his long arms wrapped around her now, lifting her up onto tiptoe, she nearly laughed in relief.

After his initial dubious reception, the Doctor was surprised to find himself with an armful of Martha Jones, but couldn’t say he minded. When he said he missed her, it wasn’t simply her, but all the little things that went with her, like hugs and hand-holding and shared smiles and had she always smelled this good? Like jasmine, green tea and chocolate. He was reluctant to let her go, but knew he should.

When Martha stepped back, they both began talking at once, then laughed and fell into an awkward silence like teenagers on their first date. Returning to her plan of playing it cool, Martha opted to wait for him to speak and explain himself, rather than immediately admit she’d known he was coming and why.

That she hadn’t moved from the doorway yet worried the Doctor a bit, and he unsuccessfully attempted to convince himself that she was only barring his entrance for some female reason. The flat wasn’t tidy enough for her liking, or she had her unmentionables lying about or something. Martha had never struck him as the sort of woman to care much about that, but it had been awhile since he’d seen her last and people changed.

“If it’s not too much trouble, could I come in for a bit?” he asked, hopeful.

“Yeah, of course,” Martha replied, as if she’d not been waiting for him to ask. Barefoot, she was shorter than he was used to seeing her, but it didn’t make any difference. In the time since he’d first met her, she’d grown in presence so much that she might as well have towered in that doorway. It didn’t help that he was there with the sole purpose of making himself more vulnerable than he was comfortable with doing.

Tish was something of a slob, but Martha’s attention to detail more than made up for it. The flat wasn’t simply tidy, it was nigh on spotless, a result of restless nights requiring some sort of occupation. At first, Martha had taken moonlit walks through the neighborhood, but one instance of Tish waking to find her gone was all the incentive she needed to stay put after. It wasn’t particularly easy for her, given her natural propensity for walking these days, but she managed.

The ice cream was melted down to a lone island in the middle of a brown, chocolate pool, and the Doctor peered down at the bowl as if it held a sudden interest for him. It was easier than looking Martha in the eye, just now. “How’ve you been making out?” he asked, glancing up her way.

Small talk felt false on him, and Martha’s eyes narrowed a moment before she deigned to answer him. “All right,” she replied, which was the truth if taken at face value. “Been anywhere interesting lately?” she asked before he could slip another question in, and politeness aside, it was a hell of a question and they both knew it, given the fact that what it was actually asking was whether he’d been traveling alone all this time. The Doctor feigned ignorance and tugged absently on his earlobe.

“Oh, you know. Here and there. Spent some time on the Titanic.”

“The Titanic.”

“Yeah, buggered the TARDIS all up- Say, d’you have anymore of that?” He pointed to the bowl.

Martha had forgotten what it was like, keeping up with him. He switched gears so fast you never quite knew if you were coming or going. “Er- Sure. You can have what’s left of that, if you want. I won’t finish it, it’ll just go to waste.”

“Brilliant!” His grin was wide and toothy, and shot straight through Martha like a damned cliché. As he settled down to spoon up some of the melted chocolate, he peered owlishly up at Martha, but didn’t speak again until he’d downed three spoonfuls.

“We ought to catch up,” he reasoned, and she arched a disbelieving brow. “I mean-“ he started again, and licked some of the chocolate from the corner of his mouth. “We ought to talk.” He’d not intended to come right out and say it like that, but the truth seemed less likely to get him smacked.

“Talk about what?” Martha asked, rocking back on her heels as she watched him. It amazed her still how one man, alien or no, could in turns be the most dominating male presence she’d ever known and such a little boy. Most of the typically male traits were amplified in him, like a caricature.

“Well.” The spoon fell back to the bowl with a resounding clank, and the Doctor set the bowl aside. Chocolate ice cream, while good for a great many situations, wasn’t likely to help in this one. “We have some unfinished business, I’d say.”

“Unfinished business.”

“You sound a bit like a parrot when you do that, you know.”

“That’s good. Give me a complex for trying to get clarification.” The corners of her mouth twitched down.

“I didn’t say it was bad!” the Doctor protested, but immediately after made the wise decision to abandon ship on that argument, and pressed onwards. “And yes, unfinished business. You and I. The two of us.”

“Were you going to enlighten me as to what that business is, or should I start making random guesses?”

The Doctor frowned, and for all of his tall, gangly stature, managed to look like a rebuked child. “You’re not making this easy on me, you know,” he pointed out.

“Yes, I do know,” Martha cheerfully replied, and took that as her cue to sweep up the half-finished bowl of ice cream and carry it to the kitchen. The Doctor’s mouth opened to protest, but his voice didn’t work quickly enough to stop her, and he was left sitting alone on the couch, one long-fingered hand hanging in mid-air where he’d unsuccessfully attempted to flag Martha down.

Perhaps the ice cream had been a bad idea.

“I deserve it,” he told her from the kitchen doorway a moment later.

“I know that, too,” Martha answered, not looking up from where she was rifling through the cupboards. The act was a little too forced, glaringly obvious, but she continued with it anyway.

“Are you going to let me apologize?” the Doctor asked, frustrated but unmoving from where he was slouched in the doorway. Martha stopped to turn and look at him, a tin of biscuits in her hand.

“For what?” she asked, and swallowed back the palpable sense of déjà vu.

For one white hot moment, the Doctor hated the woman standing in front of him. Hated her wide-eyed curiosity that was barely masking the vulnerability beneath, hated that he could still smell her on his coat. He hated her for doing this to him.

“Being an ass,” he answered, then immediately clarified lest she think that was too broad a statement. “You were amazing. I assumed you’d know.”

To Martha’s credit, she still had a hold of the biscuit tin, and her hands were steady. “Oh,” she answered, the word lilting, as if he’d just informed her of the weather or what he ate for dinner the night before. The Doctor found her reaction patently unsatisfying and arched his brows in silent expectation of more. He’d just poured out his heart, and got “oh?”

“Bit late, aren’t you?” she finally continued, faltered a few seconds, and then turned back to the cupboard. She’d not even been after biscuits and had no idea how in the hell the tin had ended up in her hand. The Doctor didn’t immediately reply, and she assumed he’d fallen into a sulk. When she turned round again, having dispatched with the biscuits, she nearly yelped in surprise to find that he’d been standing just behind her for possibly the entire time.

“Sorry,” he offered with an awkward rub against the back of his neck. “For startling you, I mean, not- Well, no, I’m sorry about the other, too. Being late.”

“Oh.”

“I seem to remember you having a more advanced vocabulary.”

Martha hesitated. “Should I be saying something else?”

The Doctor opened his mouth as if about to pontificate, and then clapped it shut again and pulled a face. “Come to think of it, I don’t know. I’ve not really done this before.”

“Apologizing.”

“Yeah.” His brow furrowed like it did when he couldn’t work something out. “It’s a bit odd.”

“Nine hundred something years, and you’ve never apologized before? Come on. I’ve heard you apologize loads of times.”

“Not like this,” he somberly pointed out with one slow blink.

“Oh,” Martha said, and upon seeing the bemused look on his face, hastily added, “OH. How… interesting.” The Doctor smiled.

“It’s not, really, is it?”

“No, actually, it’s rather, well…”

“Sad.”

“Maybe a little.”

“One doesn’t negate the other, though.”

“No, it’s really not that interesting.” Martha wrinkled her nose, and he chuckled.

“You might be biased. Seen lots of very interesting things.”

“No, I don’t think so, I think you’re just boring.”

“I always suspected.” He was grinning again, and Martha was smiling, a beaming sort of smile that lit up her face more than any others had in a year. For that one moment, standing in the middle of Tish’s kitchen, she almost felt right again. Like laying the foundation to rebuild upon.

But then he had to go and ruin it. Patience had never been the Doctor’s strong point.

“So you’ll come back,” he concluded, pleased that things had gone so well, and quickly, too!

Martha blinked several times in rapid succession. “What?”

“You’ll... come… back?” he tried again, and then swallowed hard. His mouth had gone suddenly dry, and he suspected it was a direct result of the look of disbelief on Martha’s face.

“With you,” she clarified.

“Well. Yeah,” the Doctor answered, and considered whether now was a good time to begin backpedaling. “I just thought-“

“What?” Martha asked, interrupting him. “You thought what?”

“Uh, well. You seemed happy, just now, and-“

“So I’m not allowed to smile at you?”

“I prefer when you do,” he answered, although the turn in the conversation had confused him.

“Without you jumping to conclusions, I mean.”

“You don’t want to come back.”

“I didn’t say that.”

This was rapidly becoming one of the most confusing conversations the Doctor had ever had, which was saying quite a lot, given his age and propensity for being around strange folk.

“So… what are you saying, exactly?” he asked, deciding to go out on a limb. It was difficult to play a game without knowing the rules.

“I’m saying-“ Martha faltered, as she realized she didn’t actually know what she was saying, either. “I’m saying, you can’t just come in here and say you’re sorry and be all smiles and eat my ice cream and expect me to go back to trailing after you like a puppy!”

The Doctor frowned, petulant. “I don’t expect you to trail after me like a puppy. Where would you get that idea?”

“Oh, I wonder.”

“And you told me I could have the ice cream!”

Groaning, Martha leaned back against the counter. “You’ve forgotten why I left.”

“No I haven’t!”

“Then why are you asking me to come back? Why, when you know the reason I had to leave?” The insinuation being that her feelings hadn’t changed. She mentally cursed him for getting her to admit that without intending to.

“Because-“ He rocked back on his heels as he scrunched his face up, not wanting to say it, although he couldn’t pin down why. “Because I don’t have anyone else, and I miss you.”

Martha gaped. “So, let me get this straight. You miss me because you haven’t found anyone else yet.”

The Doctor’s mouth had been open to reply in the affirmative until she tacked on that bit at the end. “I didn’t say that!” he asserted.

“Yes, you did.”

“Okay, maybe I sort of did, but I didn’t mean it the way you’re taking it.”

“How is a person supposed to take something like that?”

“I just meant-“

“I know what you meant. I’m not your stray dog, Doctor.”

Every ounce of sense he had was screaming wildly for him to abort, abort, abort! Unfortunately, this version of him wasn’t terribly adept at sense, or he wouldn’t have been in this sticky situation to begin with, he’d have a warm body in his bed-

That thought took him so off guard that he did a physical double-take and stepped solidly back a step. Martha blinked. “Doctor?” she asked, worrying over the intense disbelief on his face in spite of her argument.

“Yes?” he asked, his focus snapping immediately back to her. Oh, bugger. This wasn’t at all what he’d intended, and now- Yes, yes, it was confirmed, he was looking at her breasts. He forced his gaze back up to her face, which was currently regarding him as if he’d grown a second head.

“Are you all right?” Martha slowly asked, as one might a small child or perhaps the mentally disabled. In a way, he thought he might be mentally disabled, if he was honestly contemplating what he was contemplating, so it wasn’t terribly far off the mark.

“What? Yes, of course!” he answered, too brightly, and took a second step back just to be safe. “I was just thinking of- Look, I’ve got to go, but-“ Martha looked equal measures confused and crestfallen (And possibly a little violent) and he hesitated, trying in vain to reel his rushing thoughts in. “I’ll come back.”

“What?”

“I’ve really got to go, I had no idea of… the… time.” As far as excuses went, that was possibly his worst yet.

“Have you gone mad?” It was a serious question.

“Definitely.” He dashed to the kitchen door in a flurry of overcoat, and then swung back round to face her. “D’you want me to come back?” he asked, instantly a wide-eyed puppy afraid of reprimand.

“I- “ Damn it. “Yes. Sure. Why not?”

The puppy was gone, replaced with a manic grin. “I’ll come back,” he decided aloud, and then was gone, without even clarifying when. Martha stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, slack-jawed and feeling not unlike she’d just been in a wind tunnel.


	5. Chapter 5

Business as usual for the staff of Torchwood Three wasn’t what most people would expect from what was, essentially, one of the world’s most powerful, secret organizations. Jack Harkness had taken control of Torchwood after the debacle at Canary Wharf and replaced the regimented old guard with a more fly by the seat of your pants approach, keeping his staff trimmed to a scant few necessary souls and cutting out the government altogether. It wasn’t a move without risk, but it suited him, and the casual atmosphere and fostered sense of belonging had done wonders for both production and morale. In a job which was top secret and generally all-consuming, those things paid off in spades.

Staff meetings were infrequent and informal, called spur of the moment whenever Jack felt the need, often accompanied by Chinese take-away or pizza. He gently guided the conversation more than led it, having found that brainstorming worked better when it wasn’t via dictation. It was during one of these gregarious, impromptu meetings that the Doctor barged in, trench coat flapping, fresh from his visit with Martha. He looked immediately startled and immediately apologetic, having not considered that Jack and his staff might actually be working.

Jack casually excused himself and led the Doctor from the room, leaving behind a wide-eyed staff who burst into speculation and amazement the moment the door to the conference room closed behind the two.

“Went that well, did it?” Jack asked, all amusement as he led the Doctor back downstairs to his office, both hands deep in his trouser pockets.

“I have a problem,” the Doctor ejected, bounding down the stairs after Jack.

Jack scoffed as he waved the Doctor into the cozy confines of his office and closed the door. “That’s the understatement of the century.”

“Very funny.” Jack only continued smirking as he plopped down into his desk chair and propped both feet up.

“So, you went to go see Martha, I take it,” he speculated.

“I did, yes.”

“Did she put you out? She told me she wouldn’t do that.”

“What? No- Wait, you told her I was coming?” the Doctor exclaimed.

“It might have come up.”

“Well, no wonder,” the Doctor huffed, petulant as he leaned back against the closed door, unwilling to make himself comfortable yet.

“What happened?” Jack asked with polite interest.

“She didn’t put me out, but she wasn’t pleased, either.” The Doctor frowned and fidgeted. God, he hated talking about this sort of thing. Talking about it with Jack was one step away from torture.

“What did you expect?” Jack asked, smug enough that the Doctor’s frowned deepened.

“I realize that everything that ever went wrong in the universe is my fault, but I was there to apologize.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Jack instructed. The Doctor harrumphed from his place in the doorway, and looked to his shoes.

“That’s not the trouble, anyhow,” he admitted, in serious danger of losing all the steam he’d shown up with, playing the situation off as something less important, and making a hasty retreat to the safety and familiarity of his ship.

Reticence was par for the course with the Doctor, but the atmosphere had changed with his last comment enough to make Jack land his feet back on the floor and lean forward to brace his elbows against the top of his desk. “Well?” he prompted.

The Doctor fidgeted for another ten seconds. “I was looking at her… you know…”

Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “No, actually, I don’t.”

“Her breasts, all right! I was looking at her breasts! I didn’t mean to, it just happened!”

“What, you hadn’t before?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Are you blind? Martha has a great rack.”

“I had other things on my mind.”

“Nothing takes precedence over a great rack, Doctor. Well, unless it’s a great ass, and she’s got an amazing one of those. Her tits aren’t that big, but what she’s lacking there she completely makes up for on the other side.” Jack shook his head, more confused than amused. “How could you have missed her? Sure, I get why you overlooked me. I would have overlooked me, too, for Rose. But this makes no sense.”

“I had other things on my mind,” the Doctor repeated through clenched teeth.

“But not now. Now you’ve noticed and you want to do things,” Jack concluded, and when the Doctor didn’t immediately reply, he leaned back in his chair with a whoop. “Time Lords DO have a sex drive! I knew I’d win that bet eventually. It was the love of bananas that gave it away.”

“Don’t sully my enjoyment of fruit with your filthy mind, Jack.”

“I thought we were discussing your filthy mind, Doctor.” Jack smirked. “And what you planned to do about it.”

“I’m going,” the Doctor asserted, and pushed himself from the door so that he could leave.

“Oh, come on!” Jack called in protest. “You’re still rubbish at taking a joke,” he accused.

“Ah, but you forget that I know you,” the Doctor replied, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. “And you weren’t joking.”

Jack chuckled as he rubbed sheepishly against the back of his neck. “Maybe not. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re here because you need romantic advice.”

“I didn’t say that!” the Doctor protested.

“You didn’t have to,” Jack countered with a knowing arch of his brows.

He was right, of course, and the Doctor allowed a moment of waffling for the sake of his pride before he sighed, slumping against the door again. “I don’t know how to do this, Jack,” he whined, pulling at his hair in frustration. “I’m no good at it.”

“It’s not that complicated, Doctor. The hard part is already over.”

“How do you figure that?” He really could be incredibly dense, sometimes.

“She loves you. You didn’t even have to try to get her to do that. Now it’s just a matter of letting her know it’s all right for her to feel that way.”

The Doctor scrubbed both hands over his face and moved to sink into the same armchair he’d been in earlier that week. He said nothing for over a minute, instead simply staring into the middle distance, eyes unfocused. “I’ll hurt her,” he murmured at last, in a low rumble.

“You know,” Jack asserted, shattering the somber moment with his bright, offhanded tone. “I’ve always thought that was one of your more pathetic excuses.”

The Doctor’s focus snapped over to Jack, eyes suddenly sharp and dangerous. “It’s not an excuse, it’s the truth.”

“Nah, I don’t think it is,” Jack replied with a slight shake of his head and leaned back in his chair again. “I think it’s an excuse, and one of your favorites because it allows you to feel like a philanthropist while never really committing to anything or anyone.” Before the Doctor could protest (Or perhaps decide to murder him), he continued. “But have you ever stopped to really consider, what if? What if it worked? What if she loves you enough to stay? Isn’t it worth it to find out if it can be good again?”

Jack had always been cocky, but at some point over the last hundred years, he’d combined it with a pared-down sort of wisdom. It annoyed the Doctor that he was giving voice to so many of the recent wanderings of his mind, especially when he wasn’t of a mind to share this part of himself with anyone. “I really hate you,” he lied, and glared at Jack when he laughed.

“I think I can handle that.”


	6. Chapter 6

It was nearly four days later when Martha saw the Doctor again; just long enough for her to believe he might have forgotten, but not long enough to lose hope. When she spotted him reclined against her car in the Royal Hope employee car park, she couldn’t be certain whether she was relieved or irritated. It was perhaps a little of both.

This incarnation of the Doctor was tall and lanky, with long limbs that shouldn’t have been graceful yet were. He was pale and freckled absolutely everywhere with a shock of unruly brown hair that seemed to have a life of its own, and stayed stuck up at odd angles anytime he tugged at it in thought, which was frequently. Somehow, it all worked exceptionally well for him, paired as it was with his angular features and wide brown eyes the color of dark chocolate. He was fond of tailored suits and Converse trainers, and had a smile that could make him appear just a little crazed but never anything but genuine.

It was the smile that got to Martha, every single time. He was grinning at her now, clearly pleased to see her, fidgeting at the back of her fuel-efficient compact as she approached. Staying still seemed to be a problem for him, and had he been human, Martha would have suggested he had ADHD. There were times when just keeping up with what he was saying was exhausting.

“Hullo there, Doctor,” he greeted, a touch of pride lurking beneath his amused tone. Martha smiled in spite of herself, recalling the first time they’d met, and how she’d informed him that she believed you had to earn that title.

“Hello, Doctor,” she replied, stopping several feet in front of him, bag slung over her shoulder. It had been a long shift; she was tired and looked it. Sleeping was still a problem for her even on her better days. “What’re you doing here?” At her car, no less.

“I told you I’d be back, didn’t I?”

“That was four days ago.”

“So?”

“I suppose ‘back’ is relative,” she allowed, and adjusted the lay of her bag on her shoulder as she continued so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d changed your mind.”

“No, of course I hadn’t, I- Wait.” The Doctor canted his head with a squint. “Changed my mind about what?”

“The apology.”

“Oh, right.” Damn. He’d been hoping she meant the part about traveling together again, and not simply because a few well-timed remarks from Jack now had him wondering how she looked naked. “No, I absolutely meant that.”

“But what are you doing here? At the hospital?”

“Thought I’d see you in your element,” he made up. The truth was, he’d not thought about it much, afraid that his mind might dissuade him from action.

“We’re in the car park,” Martha pointed out.

“Surprise?” he offered with an uncertain smile and flourish of both hands.

“Where’s the TARDIS?” she asked, casting a glance over his shoulder, as if she might have somehow missed a big, blue police call box sitting amidst all the doctors’ cars.

“Left it just round the corner.” Her jerked a thumb over one shoulder and then arched his brows hopefully. “Why, you want to take a ride?”

“No,” Martha immediately replied, and assertively enough that the Doctor reared back. He thought, perhaps, she doth protest too much, but there was always the possibility that she really wasn’t interested anymore.

“All right,” he carefully replied, and thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets. “Are you certain?” he hastily asked after a pause, and the hope in his eyes very nearly broke Martha’s resolve.

“Quite, thank you,” she answered, recalling what Jack had told her the last time they spoke. “I need to get home.”

“I could take you home,” the Doctor offered like an eager suitor, and it took Martha so completely aback that she rifled immediately through her pockets for her car keys, afraid that he wasn’t himself.

“I have a car,” she answered, and moved to the driver’s side door.

“Are you- You’re going?” the Doctor asked, trailing after her.

“Yes, I’m going,” Martha replied as she tossed her bag into the back seat. After a moment’s consideration, she added, “You’re acting strange and I don’t trust you right now, so yes, I’m going.”

“I’m- But- What??” Was he behaving strangely? They were having a simple conversation on the third floor of a parking deck; it seemed perfectly reasonable to him. “Martha.” He reached for her arm to prevent her climbing into the car. “What is this? I can’t just come round to visit you?”

After a deep breath, Martha turned to look the Doctor in the eye, a slight wistfulness lurking behind her gaze. “No,” she answered, and gently extracted her arm from his grip. “You can’t.” Further explanation wasn’t necessary; he already knew why.

Still, the affirmation hit the Doctor like that proverbial ton of bricks, and he looked down to his shoes as his hand fell back to his side. Martha, he noticed, had her feet placed just to either side of an oil spot, and he wondered whether she’d avoided it on purpose. It was likely; she was good about details that way.

“Right. Um.” He thrust both hands into his coat pockets without looking up, uncertain what to say to mend this. He’d always been somewhat lacking in social graces. Then again, perhaps Jack was all wrong and it really had been too long. The Doctor couldn’t blame her for wanting to move on. “D’you want your mobile back?” He peeked up at her, some wayward fringe falling across his line of vision. Instinctively, Martha reached up to brush the hair back.

“I asked you to keep it for me, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.”

“And I said I’d call, didn’t I?”

“But you haven’t.” The words were out quite before he could think to stop them, but what was worse was the disappointed tone he said them in. Martha was taken aback, and dropped her gaze.

“Did you want me to?” she quietly asked, her fingers curled hard over the top of the driver’s side door.

“I didn’t want you to go in the first place,” the Doctor pointed out. “You’re the one that made that decision.”

“Look, I can’t-“ Martha sighed, her gaze jerking back up to him. “I can’t have this conversation again. I’m sorry that I left, but I had to do it. You know why, and I don’t-“ She took another long breath; they weren’t making her feel as steady as she had hoped. “Right now, I just need to go home, take a hot bath and go to sleep. I’m sorry.”

She was in the car with the door closed behind her before he could stop her, but the Doctor wasn’t certain he wanted to. It was a difficult situation for both of them, but she had a point – One he’d missed before now, in spite of Jack’s careful instructions to ensure the contrary. Just his being there was painful for her, and as he watched her pull away, the Doctor made the decision to simply let it well enough alone, for her sake.

At some point between that moment and when he reached the TARDIS again, he changed his mind.

Martha didn’t want to stay away because of painful memories, she wanted to stay away because she had feelings that weren’t reciprocated. That was a very wise decision, he had to admit, but the trouble now was he wasn’t certain those feelings weren’t reciprocated. For all he knew, maybe they’d been reciprocated the entire time, and he’d been so full up of self-loathing and mourning over the loss of his last companion that he couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge it. It wasn’t entirely his fault – It had been a long time since he’d loved anyone the way he’d loved Rose, and that loss had been acute. Martha deserved to be more than some sort of rebound anyhow, but now that he considered it, perhaps that was what she believed she was. In fact, she’d confirmed it, hadn’t she? No wonder she’d been so ill over his taking her to New Earth. How had he missed that?

Without being entirely aware of it, the Doctor had made his way back to the TARDIS, let himself in, and had been wandering circles around the console as his mind whirred away, turning over memories like one might rocks in a riverbed, to see what’s beneath that you’ve missed. He was coming to realize that he had, in fact, missed quite a lot. His spindly fingers tugged at his hair in frustration, and for all that his eyes were wide open, he wasn’t seeing anything around him.

It wouldn’t do. It simply would not do, not the way things were. He’d left loose ends before, but not like this. Spurred suddenly into action, he foisted himself upon the console and set the coordinates for Latisha Jones’ flat.

 

“Martha!!”

Tish’s cry hadn’t been necessary, as Martha had come sprinting out of the bathroom the moment the TARDIS had begun to appear. Squinting into the wind and holding her dressing gown closed with both hands, she stood beside her awed sister as the familiar blue telephone box appeared in the middle of their parlor, of all places. The door opened a slim crack, barely enough to see through.

“Doctor?” Martha asked with a cant of her head.

“That’s a relief!” the Doctor exclaimed as he threw the door fully open and exited his ship. “Just wanted to make certain I wasn’t interrupting anything. Everybody’s got their clothes on, I see, that’s good.” He cleared his throat and shifted his focus from where Martha was clamping her dressing gown closed to the beaming Tish who was now before him.

“Latisha Jones,” he grinned, and accepted her enthusiastic hug.

“What’s going on?” Tish eagerly asked, and swung her gaze back round to Martha, who ignored her sister’s excited expression. “Is there some kind of interstellar mystery you need Martha’s help on or something?”

“Actually, I was just here to see Martha,” he answered. Martha seemed much less pleased at this prospect than Tish expected, and she cast both the Doctor and her sister a confused frown.

“I think I’ve missed something, here.”

It wouldn’t be the first time, Martha thought, considering how easily Tish had played into both Lazarus and the Master’s hands. After a sigh, Martha opened her mouth to make an attempt at an explanation, but the Doctor cut her off.

“I thought we could do dinner,” he offered, rocking uneasily back on his heels. Tish’s head snapped over to Martha like a tennis spectator.

Martha hesitated. “Dinner?”

“That’s what people do when they like each other, isn’t it?” he asked, sounding genuinely uncertain.

“What, like a date?”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s what I mean.”

“You want to take me on a date. Like, dinner and a movie, normal person date.”

“Well, I hadn’t really thought about it, but I think I could come up with something a bit more interesting than that.”

“What?”

“D’you like sushi? Because there’s this brilliant little-“

“WHAT?!”

Tish took that as her cue to make a hasty exit. “It’s lovely to see you again,” she whispered to the Doctor, and skittered into the bedroom, closing the door after her. The Doctor watched her go and then turned his gaze back to where Martha stood ten paces away, holding onto the front of her dressing gown as if for dear life, clearly incensed. He swallowed once, audibly.

“Sushi?” he repeated, and considered beating a retreat back to the safety of the TARDIS.

“Are you on something?” Martha demanded. “Some sort of space hash or something?”

“What? No-“

“Then why are you asking me out on a date? YOU. A DATE.”

“You make it sound like I’ve never gone on a date before. I took you on a date, we went to see Shakespeare.”

“And then aliens descended and you made sure to tell me you wished another woman was there with you instead of me. Bang up date, that was.”

The Doctor pulled a face as he tugged on his right earlobe. “Yeah, that didn’t turn out so well, now that I think of it. Well, in the end, but-“

“Why are you here?” Martha demanded. “WHY? Why are you here, Doctor?”

“I just said!”

“To ask me out on a date?”

“To ask you to dinner, yes.”

“But why?”

“Why do men normally ask women out on dates?” Honestly, it wasn’t as if it was complicated, and she was typically very clever. Still, Martha was gaping at him. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

“But-“ she began, and for a moment, she physically slumped, as if all the wind had gone out of her sails. “You’re not interested.”

“Who told you that?” the Doctor asked, affronted.

“You.”

“I did no such thing!”

“Well, you didn’t correct me when I left,” Martha exclaimed.

“You said you had things to do, that you needed to be with your family.”

“But when I came back…“

The Doctor sobered. “You’re not the only one who needed time, Martha Jones.”

That took Martha aback, and all at once, her righteous indignation disappeared, like flipping a switch. She’d spent so much time bemoaning him and his motives, she’d given little thought to his emotional needs, and she felt incredibly selfish for it now. With the way she tended to keep everyone at arm’s length these days, she should have known better, and that was without Jack’s warning about this very possibility.

“You actually want to take me out,” she carefully reiterated, so afraid to hope even now. “On a date.”

“Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t,” he confirmed, and quirked a faint smile her way.

“Like a romantic date.”

That drew the Doctor up short, and he faltered at having reality so pushed into his face. “Well… dinner. I said dinner.”

“Not a date, then.”

The Doctor pulled a face. “Isn’t this just semantics? Does it really matter what we call it?”

“Yes,” Martha quickly replied, and then cleared her throat. “It matters, because one is just a dinner between two friends, and one is… not. I think it’s only fair that I know what I’m getting into.”

“Then you’ll go?” Martha’s mouth opened to protest, and he pointed at her before she could speak. “You just said you want to know what you’re getting into, which insinuates you’re getting into something.”

“Yes, all right,” Martha relented, but before she could say more, Tish had thrown open the bedroom door and come bounding out to throw her arms around her sister.

“I just knew the two of you would work it out eventually!” she cheered, giving Martha a squeeze, seemingly unaware of the fact that her sister now wanted to sink into the ground.

The Doctor was vaguely amused by the show, until he found himself with his own armful of Tish. Thankfully, she released him quickly, and he’d not had to do much but give her back an awkward pat.

“Well?” she asked, stepping back to her place between them. “When are you going? Where are you going? Oh my God, Martha, what are you going to wear?” She turned to the Doctor. “She has almost no clothes, you realize. All gone in the explosion, and she’s too short to properly wear anything of mine.”

“Hey!” Martha protested. “I’m not short!” The Doctor and Tish both arched disbelieving brows at her, and Martha huffed. When she released her dressing gown to cross her arms defensively over her chest, it fell open just enough at the neck to give a rather lovely view of her cleavage, if you were tall enough, which the Doctor was. It was with some difficulty that he directed his gaze back to Tish.

“So?” Tish asked, waving an impatient hand at the Doctor. He blinked once, slowly.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Where are you going?”

“Barking mad,” Martha mumbled, and took the opportunity to leave the room to get dressed. The Doctor looked wistfully after her, rather wishing she’d stayed in that dressing gown a bit longer.

“We’re, um.” He shook his head, and peered down at Tish. “I don’t know. We usually just figure it out.”

“How can she be expected to dress properly if she doesn’t know where you’re taking her?” Tish asked in disbelief.

“There’s clothes in the TARDIS,” the Doctor slowly replied, wondering whether that was a good thing to reveal to Latisha.

“What, like, space suits?” Tish scoffed. “If you want this to work, you need to be serious. You should listen to me, I’m her sister.”

“I am being serious!” the Doctor protested, and looked to the bedroom door again, hoping Martha would reappear soon and give him a reprieve. “I wasn’t talking about space suits. There’s space suits in there, but that’s not all, there’s a whole wardrobe.”

“But isn’t it just your clothes?”

“No, it’s not. I promise you, Martha will be able to find something appropriate to wear.”

Tish didn’t appear altogether satisfied, but let it go, for which the Doctor was immensely thankful. “Do something romantic,” she discreetly advised, and gave his lapel an assuring pat. In spite of her intention, this recommendation only served to make him appear as if he’d just eaten some bad shellfish. “Just the two of you,” Tish said, and then added in a whisper, “It’s harder for her to keep the wall up that way.”

For all that she had been annoying him, the Doctor had to hand it to Latisha Jones. She saw more than they gave her credit for.

Nodding, he offered a faint smile. “Good advice.”


	7. Chapter 7

The Doctor did not do "dates." Yes, yes, he took his various and sundry companions places, and sometimes they teasingly called them dates, but he did not do traditional, romantically-intended dates. Play dates, yeah. Purely platonic, let's skip around the universe having a lark dates. But not the sort of situation that required worrying about what you were wearing and whether you had remembered the breath mints. The Doctor wasn't really used to worrying about either of those things, and he was more than a little turned around just now by the idea that he was supposed to start doing so. Martha had always liked him just fine the way he was, right? Had fallen in love with him, even, if you believed that part of it. However, the Doctor, self-loathing as he was, was rather mope-ily clinging to the idea that she may have been in love with the idea of him rather than him, himself. It wouldn't have been the first time, and really, who was he compared to the image of the crusading, powerful Time Lord? The reality was extremely far from the persona. Worrying about breath mints was seeming more and more critical.

Currently, he was in a quandary over which suit to wear: Brown or blue? He thought he recalled her saying she preferred the blue, but maybe he'd made that up or he'd misheard. He'd been wearing the blue when they first met, hadn't he? Oh yes, in the hospital, on the moon! He'd not had shoes on, though. Did that make a difference? He had snogged her, too, so maybe the blue would bring back good memories. The sort of memories he'd prefer to encourage. Unless it made her think of the subsequent year and a half in which he'd been an absolute ass, and how the kiss wasn't supposed to be more than a genetic transfer...

Oh, sod it. He was wearing the brown. No, the blue. The brown. The blue.

 

Martha had allowed Latisha to help her get ready. It was a compromise of sorts, as Martha, while being feminine, had never been the giggly, girly type. Tish simply could not contain herself, however, and so her elder sister had given over and accepted advice, which, Martha was certain to establish at the fore, she was fully permitted to ignore should she like. She'd been dressing herself since age three, and was quite good at it by now.

Despite the Doctor's insistence that the TARDIS would provide any clothing that Martha would need, the sisters had pulled together an outfit that wasn't entirely sensible, but happened to look incredibly good. Initially, Martha had balked at the idea of wearing a dress -- Honestly, she simply wasn't that fond of them, and they had a tendency to fly up while you were running for your life. After sufficient wheedling by Tish, however, she found herself standing in front of the mirror clad in one of Tish's black pencil skirts and a sleeveless silk shirt she'd splurged on the day before. It was a deep, royal blue, had a neckline that plunged far lower than she would have typically been comfortable with, and made her dark skin look like it glowed. Tish burbled with excitement as she handed Martha over some earrings.

"He's not going to know what hit him!" she enthused.

Martha was attempting to remain apathetic, but was finding it a difficulty with her more romantically-inclined sister bouncing about. "It's only dinner. Not even a proper date. Just... a thank you, sorry for being an arse sort of thing."

"No, that's what you're calling it, to make yourself feel better about the whole thing. It's a date. A proper date, even."

"To make myself feel better about what?" Martha cast Tish a withering, sideways glance as she fastened one silver dangle to her right ear.

"About giving in and forgiving him. For not being super woman, or whatever it is you think you have to be now. For letting yourself think that he might really want you back."

Martha swung an annoyed arm out, but Tish skittered away out of her reach.

"You're so hostile these days," Tish declared with a self-important wrinkle of her nose.

"You would be, too, if you had to live with you."

 

There were other places in the universe and in time that might have made an even more singular impression than Rome. The Doctor could think of a dozen civilizations of a similar ilk right off the top of his head – All brilliant in their own right, but running on that same clash of the primitive and the refined. Rome held particular appeal, however, because it was familiar (and therefore comforting) to Martha. At the height of its self-righteous swagger, the seat of the empire was in possession of some spectacular private gardens, and if you happened to know the right sort of people, they made the perfect spot for confessions and forgiveness. The Doctor happened to know the right sort of people, and was rather hoping that the thick drapes of jasmine and rose would help Martha into a generous mood.

Understanding the mechanics of dating on a more intellectual level than emotional one, the Doctor had gone to a degree of effort that was, in the end, more educated guesswork than anything else. It had been so long since he’d had the occasion to court anyone, and never with the human tradition. A small table and two chairs had been set up on a sprawling Roman terrace, lamps lit and food secured beneath the requisite silver domes. It was all as out of place as the TARDIS or Martha and himself, but the gardener was a good fellow and recalled all too well how the Doctor had assisted him with some nasty business involving an alien strain of rather large man-eating lilacs the year before. While the Doctor never helped with the expectation of reciprocation, he wasn’t completely above calling in a favor, and the area had been easily enough secured without much fuss. They’d not be interrupted and inadvertently introduce the ancient Romans to 19th century French cuisine.

The moment she stepped from the TARDIS, Martha was glad that she’d allowed Tish to talk her into wearing something nicer than blue jeans. In spite of not wanting to appear too pleased by much of anything, she had to admit to herself that effort had been made, and to lovely result. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers, the sky above clear and twinkling with stars. While the concept was simple – The standard private meal in a romantic locale – the Doctor managed it as only he could. How she had hoped for something like this, back when they were traveling together. That it was done on her behalf was intoxicating and empowering, and not for the first time, she wondered what the catch was.

“I hope French food’s all right,” the Doctor began as he slunk out of the TARDIS behind her, awkward and unable to stay silent. “I didn’t know what you liked, and Italian seemed redundant.” Both hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his trousers and he rocked back onto his heels as he regarded the table. “I’ve only just brought it, though, so it’s fresh. Carried it out of the kitchen myself.” Which was to say, they’d just missed him dropping the food off.

“I’m sure it’ll be wonderful,” Martha allowed, because she might have been holding onto a ridiculous grudge for the sake of self-preservation, but she wasn’t unreasonable. There wasn’t much that he did halfway, not if he was aware of himself doing it.

They stood side by side for another long moment, staring at the table in expectation, as if waiting for someone to seat them. Eventually, Martha looked over to the Doctor, silent but prompting him nonetheless, and he roused himself from his rambling thoughts enough to guide her to her seat. The entire date experience was already terrifying. Amazing that humans went through these paces so frequently. It was an everyday kind of courage that the Doctor was inherently lacking.

He sat in his own seat, stood again, dashed to the TARDIS for something, forgot instantly what he’d been after, and dashed back again. Martha watched all of this with quiet curiosity, not understanding what bee had gotten into his bonnet that whatever natural finesse he had seemed to have disappeared. Personal experience dictated that she thought he had very little to lose from this situation.

“Doctor,” she said, just the name, decisively, and not unlike a mother reminding a buoyant child to behave.

“Yes? Oh, sorry, I was just- what?” he found his seat again, but was perched on the edge of it as if he expected to need to spring to his feet and run at any moment.

“I thought you said we’d not be disturbed.”

“Right, right, I did.” He blinked owlishly at Martha, and then diverted his attention to his fork, which he picked up and inspected in the lamp light, as if for spots.

“Then why do you look as if you’re waiting for an attack?” She didn’t realize her irony.

For a long moment, it seemed as if he didn’t intend to answer her, his focus drifting instead to their food, which he uncovered with a flourish. Martha, being used to him lapsing into silences at personal inquiries, sighed resignedly and turned her attention to the coq au vin.

“Habit,” he quietly answered, and nudged the bread her way. Martha lifted her gaze to him again. He looked not unlike an uncertain child playing at being an adult.

“I’ve seen you more relaxed when running for your life,” she pointed out, not to be contrary but because she was trying to puzzle out what the trouble was now. He had always been so certain of himself; this new side of his personality unsettled her because she couldn’t quite parse it.

“Used to that,” he countered, and motioned to her glass. “Wine?”

Martha accepted, and listened passively as the Doctor launched into a ramble about the particular vintage, and wine in general, and the remarkable vineyards on Al’Kazzkath 9, where they had gotten so good at wine-making that just a sip could evoke all seven senses – They had seven senses in the Rangpor System, not unusual – and give you something akin to an out of body experience for the moment before you swallowed. They should go, he said without thinking. The effects weren’t quite as intense for humans, what with only five conscious senses, but worth the trip nonetheless, and he fancied she’d quite like the moonrise over the Quell Mountains, made the peaks glow like sapphires. It was blue, the moon. Like the song.

There was nothing quite like watching him relate something he was passionate about, and he was passionate about nearly everything. Watching him yammer on could be in turns energizing and exhausting, and even now Martha hated her reality, hated her own sense of practicality. She wished she could grin back at him and nod in enthusiasm and beg to go. Longing for how things were didn’t change the present, however, and she still didn’t know what they were playing at. This dance felt odd to her, having to work out the steps as she went. What little spontaneity she was in possession of she owed largely to him.

After Martha didn’t respond beyond taking another bite of chicken, he realized his slip, and fell into a stoic silence, seemingly afraid of saying anything at all. His disappointment was palpable, but she had no idea how to assuage it without setting aside her personal convictions. She did like listening to him talk, however, and told him so.

The Doctor perked up, and while his face flushed with both hope and pleasure at Martha’s remark, he looked momentarily uncertain as well, brows drawing together as his mind turned over the puzzle of it. He didn’t appear confused so much as intensely focused, and she wondered what he was on about. It was beyond her grasp that these feelings weren’t foreign so much as long forgotten. It took a little effort to connect the physical response to the psychological meaning, as he’d never been particularly adept at self-analysis.

“I miss you,” he said, like an answer to a quiz question. Martha faltered in lifting a bite of chicken to her mouth.

“You said. Before,” she reminded him, kindly. She didn’t mind hearing it, but that it weakened her defenses.

“No, no. I mean, yes I did, but it’s not the same thing. Didn’t really understand it, then.”

“And you do now?”

“I- No, not entirely. It’s a messy business, feelings.”

“True.” Martha took a sip from her glass with some effort.

“I thought, before, that was enough.” His admission was quiet, the intonation seeming to rise and fall with the flickering of the oil lamps. “Just saying it. But it isn’t, is it?”

Martha couldn’t look at him, and so mediated on the velvet red colour of the wine in her glass. “No. Never really has been. You go without something so long, it makes the little effort seem bigger. But it’s not enough. It’s just words.”

“It’s not, though,” he countered, although he understood what she was saying.

“You want to be congratulated on your epiphany,” Martha returned, finally lifting her eyes to him again, fingers hovering against the smooth curve of her glass. “But that’s not fair. I was there right in front of you the whole time.” They were entering dangerous territory now, pulling back the curtains and letting the truth stand stark in the light. Maybe it was time, she thought. Past it, even.

“Yes,” he agreed. “You were.” There were extenuating circumstances, reasons for keeping his distance even as his instinct wanted to admire her, but excuses wouldn’t be allowed at this juncture. This hadn’t been a single mistake; it was a pattern of behavior stretching out over their entire time together. He couldn’t blame her for being hesitant now, as he’d not be inclined to trust himself were he her.

For all that it sounded as if they’d come to an understanding, the conversation hit a wall and stalled, floundering there on the tabletop between them like some living thing in want of more anima. Martha chewed primly on her dinner and sipped of her wine, and the Doctor pushed the food around his plate as he contemplated the tricky game of saying the appropriate thing at the appropriate time. He’d never been gifted with that.

“I thought it would help if I made a gesture,” he explained, picking up the conversation as if it hadn’t been in its death throes and was merely taking a breather. “But that’s not enough, either.” It wasn’t a question, and seemed less put to Martha than the cosmos and himself, a method for talking himself through the quandary of the situation. “I don’t reckon that if I asked you to tell me what I need to do, you’d give me an answer.”

“No,” Martha slowly answered and took a fortifying sip from her wine. “But not because I’m playing at some game. Because I don’t know.”

“So, in theory, you could have me running after you, trying to fix this for eternity.”

“Hardly that long,” she answered, with a tiny yet encouraging smile. “Surely I’d get bored with it before then.”

That diffused some of the tension, and after another minute of silver clanking on porcelain, the Doctor launched into another informative and sentimental ramble, this time about the use of wine in cooking, and chicken, and the beaked people of the moons of Flourin. Martha displayed sufficient interest to keep him going quite awhile, and while he wasn’t allowing her much time to speak, or offering her more personalized attention, she was quite all right with that. As far as dates that weren’t supposed to be dates went, it wasn’t too bad.

The Doctor’s thinking was far from linear, however, and as he’d been in a ramble about the emperor of the beaked people, he’d also been contemplating what to do next, how best to demonstrate the depth of his sincerity. The next, terrifying stage of all this couldn’t be reached if she’d not lower her defenses long enough to give him a proper chance. It would take something big, he realized, something that not only discomfited him, but that she would know did so. A demonstration that he was willing to be vulnerable for her.

For a few minutes, he thought to scrap the idea altogether. Cut bait and move on, and let Martha Jones have her life and her unfortunate memories and himself the bitter knowledge that very little of what he ever did on a personal level was worth the effort. But then she tipped a dark-eyed gaze his way from over the rim of her goblet, and he wasn’t certain if it was the lamplight or simply her that softened her expression that way, but she looked like nothing less than an accidental goddess. Any thought of abandoning his goal all but disappeared. In fact, most thought stopped altogether for the space of several seconds, and he faltered in the middle of a sentence about Flourin moon berries and stared.

Martha wondered if he’d conjured up some unbidden memory better left forgotten (Moon berries seemed an innocuous enough topic, but it was so difficult to tell, with him.) She opened her mouth to inquire if he was all right – He looked so stunned, and suddenly flushed! – but then he’d spoken again, beating her to the punch.

“I want you to see Gallifrey.” It was blurted, forced up and out from an unaccommodating throat. Martha blinked, once, twice, three times in rapid succession. They painted quite the picture, sitting across the table from each other, both staring at the other in shock.

It took considerable effort to recall how to speak again, but Martha managed it. “You do?” she asked.

“I do.” He sounded more sure this time as he took his emotions in hand. It was curious, watching his sudden disbelief shift to discomfort and then subtle confidence.

“But I thought that-“ Martha began, not wanting to finish the sentence, not having it in her to speak aloud that his home planet was gone, as if that would make it more real.

“Oh! Well, yes, you’re right, of course. I didn’t mean actually go there. Can’t do that, we’d have paradoxes out our ears. Someplace else, maybe, but not Gallifrey. Time Lords, you know. Can sense these sort of things.”

“What did you mean, then, if not to go there?” Martha asked with an obvious measure of disappointment.

“In the TARDIS,” the Doctor clarified, but Martha only looked more confused. “Inside, I mean, not traveling. There’s a room, sort of like virtual reality, to put it on human terms. I’ve not named it, never could come up with anything that didn’t sound ridiculous.”

“You want to show me a virtual version of Gallifrey?” Martha asked, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “Like… a game?”

“Nooo,” the Doctor immediately answered. “It’s better than any game, because it’s memory-based.”

“Memory-based.”

“Yes. I’ve a psychic connection to the TARDIS, of course, and it’s… well, it’s difficult to explain. It builds a reality from my memory. Not just sight, but as a whole.”

“So… it’s like actually being there?” Martha awed.

“As I experienced it, and as an observer, yes,” he confirmed, wistful.

“Can you do this for anything you remember?” she asked, eyes brightening with the possibilities of such a concept.

“In theory,” the Doctor confirmed. “It’s not instantaneous. I have to tell the TARDIS which memories I’d like reconstructed, have to pinpoint the moment and designate the length of it, and then it takes time to actually build it from my conscious and subconscious – You remember the pensieve in Harry Potter? It’s a bit like that, but not nearly as simple. It taxes resources, makes traveling at the same time difficult. Have to put her in idle and let her work on it.”

“So it’s something you only do for special memories? Because it slows you down,” Martha concluded.

The Doctor hesitated. “Yes,” he conceded at length. “Things I’d like to relive, for one reason or another.”

“That’s amazing,” Martha awed, smiling in spite of herself and the depth of the request. “God, what I wouldn’t relive if I could.”

The Doctor was pleased by her enthusiasm, but was uncharacteristically reserved, seemingly unaffected by it. “Finish your crème brulee, and we’ll go.”

When he was ordinarily so buoyant, it was impossible to miss how tempered he was now, and Martha’s expression softened and grew almost sentimental as she peered back at him. “We don’t have to,” she replied.

“No, we don’t,” the Doctor agreed. “But that’s the point.”

 

The room without a name, which Martha had tentatively labeled the Memories Room for her own reference, had curved walls of pale grey, a small console by the door, and was innocuous in nearly every way at first glance. When Martha inquired about the lack of seating, the Doctor absently informed her that it would defeat the point, and then turned his attention to the small, glowing screen of the room’s controls. A frustrated protest died on Martha’s lips, as she assumed that soon enough, she’d understand what he meant.

With the way that the Doctor was standing in front of the control panel, it was difficult to tell exactly what he was doing, but Martha, who’d never been prone to waiting for something to happen, took a couple of steps back and craned her neck to see. The writing on the screen was familiar only because she’d seen similar elsewhere throughout the ship, but she watched what he was doing intently nonetheless. When the Doctor realized he was being so sharply observed, he took half a sideways step to further block Martha’s view, earning him a huff of annoyance.

“It’s private,” he explained without turning round.

“I can’t read Gallifreyan, or whatever that was, anyway.”

“That’s surprising,” he replied, effectively eliminating any subsequent protest. When he’d finished what he was doing a moment later, she’d forgotten her irritation in her anticipation.

“Do we just stand here?” Martha asked when the Doctor stepped up beside her and the lighting in the room began to dim. “Like watching a movie?”

“It’s a little more involved than that. You’ll see.”

 

Martha understood afterwards why it was such a difficult experience to translate into the verbal. It was so completely unlike anything she’d done or seen that there was no real context to describe it by; everything she could think of seemed to pale. The Doctor was either in possession of an incredible memory, or the TARDIS was simply extremely gifted at mining for forgotten details. Perhaps both. The end result was nothing short of extraordinary.

The innocuous grey room melted away, but it wasn’t as if she were standing watching a film, or telly, or even a play. Everything about the memory translated – Sight, sound, touch, taste, scent and even emotion – and after the first few seconds, Martha was only peripherally aware of being in the room at all, or of the Doctor’s presence beside her.

They were standing in a field beneath a sky the color of copper, scarlet grasses swaying lazily around their bare ankles. The spires of a mighty city stood in the distance, and the peaks of a mountain range beyond. The sun – No, suns – were setting behind them, warming their backs and making everything seem to glow. Martha was glad she was barefoot, because that was the only proper way to do this, and as that thought drifted away, her consciousness pushed through enough that she understood it hadn’t been her own. Her breath had caught earlier, and she now let it out in one long, tremulous exhalation, as she realized that she wasn’t herself at all. The entire experience, from the breeze in her hair to the scent of the grass and even beyond that to the accompanying nostalgia was entirely the Doctor. She was the Doctor, and she was still young, still full of hope and untapped wonder. Still enamored of her own existence, and cocky and proud and so very free. The swell of Martha’s own emotions pushed up behind those of the Doctor’s memory, and while her eyes were shining with tears, her vision didn’t blur because it wasn’t her own.

It was easier for the Doctor to watch Martha than fully engage in the memory. Not only was the sight of Gallifrey still painful for him, but she was addictive, the way she took it all in, wide-eyed and unflinching. It surprised him not at all that she worked out what was happening so quickly, and he slipped his hand into hers as a single, crystalline tear plummeted down the curve of her cheek. The marriage of compassion and courage within her was intoxicating, and he found that he couldn’t have pulled his attention away from the sight of her had he tried.

The sudden tangibility of the contact startled Martha, and she pulled back into herself enough to swing her gaze down to the slender fingers clutched against her own and then up to the quietly admiring face of the Doctor. There was such intense awareness in her eyes as she held his gaze, the picture of the human mind operating to its potential. For one long, vibrant moment she simultaneously experienced the past and faced the present, and he could have sworn that she glowed brighter than the sunlight on the mountain peaks.

“You weren’t the Doctor then,” she said, stunned that she could speak, or perhaps simply that it was her own voice.

He shook his head, beaming with pride that she could glean that sort of detail on the first go, even if it made him nervous. “No, I wasn’t.” For a few seconds, he was afraid that she’d interpret more, would know and even say his given name, but she seemed satisfied enough with her little confirmation and turned away again to watch the long shadows of city spires against the mountainscape.

“You loved it, even then,” Martha murmured, not bothering to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “But I don’t think you understood how much.” She sucked in a swift, decisive breath and let it out in a hiccough.

“Never know how much you love something until you lose it,” he answered, his voice low and tight with emotion, eyes still fixed on Martha’s profile. Her head snapped around, and he could see the uncertainty, the hope and fear all mired behind her startled gaze as she attempted to find her feet enough to decipher whether he was speaking of his home planet or of her. In truth, he’d meant both and so much more.

Compelled to movement, the Doctor reached his free hand up and cradled Martha's cheek. The skin was warm, soft, and made slick from tears, and after his first tentative touch, he pressed his fingers more firmly against the curve of her jaw line and directed her eyes back to his, back to the reality, the present. Martha's eyes were wide, dark pools, made practically black by shadow and emotion, but she didn't look startled or unnerved, and as he leaned slowly in to press his mouth over hers, she seemed as if she'd known it was coming.

Her mouth was full and pliant, and initially she moved not at all, a passive participant receiving a baptism. For a flash, the Doctor wondered whether he really had trod too far over her carefully laid boundaries, if she was simply waiting for him to finish before rebuffing his advances. But then Martha exhaled, her breath hot and sweet and tasting of sugared cream, and whatever internal battle she'd been waging was done. When her fingers lifted to curl against the pale column of his neck, they weren't timid, serving instead to steady herself as her whole body swayed forward, instinctively bending to fit the curve of his spine.

It might have been monumental. Could have been a romance novel moment of epic proportions; an overdue kiss caught in the golden memory of Gallifrey, everything fading away into a soft patina of suddenly realized love.

It might have been legendary. There were certainly all the makings for it. But it was, just as all kisses are, just a kiss. No epiphany or fireworks attached, although as far as snogs went, it wasn't exactly anything to sneeze at. When Martha drew away a moment later, she was breathless and flushed, and couldn't look the Doctor in the eye.

"Martha," he began, afraid that he'd gone too far, but leaving both hands exactly where they were against the heat of her skin. She had that look about her, as if she wanted to bolt. He didn't want her to go. Whether he wanted to take her to bed became suddenly immaterial; he didn't want her to go.

Slowly, purposefully, she extracted her hand from his grip and took half a backwards step.  
"I'm sorry," he quickly apologized, unable to keep from looking as heartbroken as he felt. Could he never get anything right?

"For what?" Martha asked, finally meeting his crestfallen gaze with her own and starting at the complete and utter regret behind his brown eyes.

The Doctor faltered. "For kissing you." He didn't look entirely certain about that, however, and then amended, "If you'd rather I hadn't."

"I didn't say that," Martha quietly answered.

"No, but you-"

"I just needed some space." Her eyes dropped again, ashamed.

"Oh." The Doctor drew his hands back and shoved them deep into his trouser pockets in chastisement and prevention both. "Right." Speaking as if he understood what was happening between them unfortunately did not make it come to pass, and when Martha peeked at him again, she got a clear read on how abashed and confused he was.

"It's just been awhile," she confessed, forcing her gaze to remain on him and not stray back to Gallifrey.

"Sure, of course."

"Since I've done this."

"Right."

"With you."

Mouth opened to offer another empty confirmation, the Doctor paused, and then clamped his mouth shut again. After an uncertain swallow, he canted his head and asked, "With me?"

Martha blanched, as much as she was able, and looked towards the doorway, suddenly more vulnerable than she was comfortable with and desperate for escape. "Yes- It's nothing, just getting used to..." She swung her gaze back to him, and licked at her lips. The taste of him had lingered, and made her distinctly unsteady. "Us. Again. You know." _Being in love with you._

The Doctor didn't know, not really, but nodded anyway. "Should I take you home?" he asked, taking particular care to school his voice and expression into vague interest and nothing more.

"Yes," Martha answered, immediately hating herself for it. "I think you'd better."


	8. Chapter 8

Not even fifteen minutes later, the TARDIS was back in Tish's parlor, the Doctor and Martha hovering awkwardly just inside the door.

"It was lovely," she insisted, because it was the proper thing to say when someone took you on such a nice date. "All of it."

"Glad you liked it." The Doctor's hands were back in his pockets again, as it seemed safer that way. He rocked back on his heels to give the false impression of apathy.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Another long moment passed with Martha worrying her bottom lip. There would be no more kisses from him tonight, or perhaps ever, she told herself, and was dismayed at how disappointed that notion made her. She'd not moved to exit yet, and the Doctor cleared his throat in a polite reminder that one of them would have to move eventually. When she peered intently up into his eyes, she couldn't get a clear read on him, and it frustrated her.

"Ask me again," she said, without warning.

The Doctor started, his brows arching. "Er- what?"

"Ask me again," Martha insisted, taking hold of his lapel and shaking it, afraid of losing this sudden burst of courage. The Doctor swayed in place, bewildered.

"Ask you what?" he replied, his tone incredulous. He was being manhandled, after all. Surely there was no cause for that, at least not under these circumstances.

How could one man be so brilliant and yet so dense? Martha stared back at the Doctor, eyes bright and desperate, silently pleading to please not make her say it, because she didn't think she could. Not yet, not like this, not when it was just as easy to shrug it off and walk out the door.

Thankfully, realization struck the Doctor swift and sure, and for one long moment he looked like John Smith again, the affable human lurking inside the Time Lord, all astonishment and eyes as wide as saucers. "Oh, right, well," he sputtered, attempting to regain a bit of his dignity. "Of course. Was getting there, you know." His right hand had escaped its pocket to worry at his earlobe, and he grinned, bright as the Gallifreyan sunset. "Would you come back?"

Martha's heart sunk. "No."

"No?" Well, now he was just confused, and looked it.

"Not like before, no," she confirmed with a shake of her head. "But if you wanted to..." She motioned to him expectantly.

The Doctor followed the wave of her hand as if it might conjure the secrets of courting a stubborn woman out of the air. "...snog?"

"Oh for God's sake." The hand in question fell solidly to Martha's side.

"What?! I thought it was a rather good snog, didn't you?"

"Well, yes, but that's not the point."

"Then what is the point? Because you're the one who stopped a perfectly good snog, Martha Jones."

"The point is, you're supposed to ask me out again!" By this time, however, she looked as if she'd rather deck him than date him.

"Why didn't you just say so?" the Doctor replied, affronted. Like he was supposed to know these things.

"I just did," Martha countered with an exasperated sigh.

The Doctor opened his mouth to retort, but nodded instead. "Yes, you did. So, will you?"  
"Will I what?"

"Go on another date with me?" He was grinning at her again, bouncing up onto the balls of his feet like an exuberant child. Martha smiled in spite of herself.

"Call me," she gently instructed, and made her exit with little fanfare, thinking it best to end things while they were ahead.

 

As it turned out, the Doctor did call her. Ten minutes later.

“Hullo!” he chirped at the other end of the line. Still in her clothes from their date, Martha swung her gaze round to peer at the wall clock.

“Doctor?”

“You told me to call,” he said, offhand. There was clanging going on in the background, and she wondered what he had gotten up to now.

“It’s only been ten minutes,” Martha warily pointed out and waved off a curious Tish, who had been attempting to press her ear up against the other side of the telephone to hear both sides of the conversation.

“Was it supposed to be longer than that?” the Doctor asked, and then cursed under his breath in something clearly not English or any other Latin-based language, and likely not from Earth.

“What?”

There was a resounding, resigned clang of metal. “Oh, not you. I’d not call you a whore monger. Aside from being rude, it wouldn’t make any sense. Not unless you’ve taken up a hobby I was unaware of.”

“I haven’t,” Martha assured him as she tucked herself into a corner of the couch and kicked off her shoes.

“What were you saying?”

“It’s only been ten minutes.”

“Twelve and fifteen seconds.”

“Twelve and seventeen seconds, then.”

“Did you want me to wait longer than that?”

“Most people do.”

“I’m not most people.”

“This is true. Bit eager of you, though.”

“Would you rather I wasn’t?”

Martha paused, unnerved by his sudden innuendo, although not in a wholly unpleasant way. “It’s just a surprise,” she replied, side-stepping the slippery subject of whether she wanted him eager for dates or anything else.

“Time’s fluid,” he ad-libbed.

“Sure, but you’re a Time Lord, and you knew to the second how long it had been since you left,” Martha blithely countered, and accepted the cup of tea that Tish passed her way.

“I thought waiting to call was out-dated in 2008.”

“It’s been ten minutes. I’ve not even had time to change.”

“Fourteen and thirty-eight seconds, and that’s just for you. I’ve been gone longer. I want to take you out again, know just the place.”

“Your bedroom?” It was possible Martha had been spending too much time with Jack.

There was a loud clank of metal on metal as the mobile was dropped on the other end. After some scrambling and a pause, the Doctor cleared his throat and calmly replied, “No.”

“You certain about that?” she replied, bolder behind the protection of the telephone but still flushed in embarrassment over his reaction to what she’d intended primarily as a joke.

“Quite.”

For a long pause, there was no reply, as Tish had seized the moment to launch into a battery of questions, including why Martha was blushing and what had happened on their date that the Doctor would be calling her so soon. Was it a booty call, she wanted to know, and Martha had covered the mouth piece with her hand to shush her younger sister. Unfortunately for the Doctor, all he heard was silence, and he began to think he had given the wrong answer.

He cleared his throat again. “That is, unless you, uh. Wanted to,” he amended, his voice cracking like a teenager at the end. “You know. Go there.”

“I’m sorry, what? Go where?” Martha was answered with silence, long enough that she thought she might have dropped the call, and peered down at the telephone’s display to ensure she was still connected. “Doctor?”

“The Grand Canyon,” he covered. “Before the American westward expansion. Gorgeous vistas, completely untouched by civilisation.”

“She’ll go!” Tish called in the background, and then yelped as Martha threw a pillow at her.

“Has she been listening the entire time?” the Doctor asked.

“Trying to,” Martha sighed, and sunk further into the couch. “The Grand Canyon.”

“Nothing like it on Earth.”

“For a proper date, I suppose.” They couldn’t take back the snogging, after all.

“Semantics.”

“Ask me.”

“Martha Jones, will you go on a proper date with me to the Grand Canyon?” She could hear the smile in his voice.

“All right, then. Come round next Tuesday, sevenish.”


	9. Chapter 9

The Grand Canyon was as spectacular as promised, and as Martha lay on her back across their picnic blanket staring at the scatter of stars in the purpling wash of sky above, she was all too aware of the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, done for. Any chin-jerking or snide remarks were facade only, her self-protective wall victim to a steady stream of wide smiles and covert touches.

"I think I prefer the past to the future," she declared with a lazy stretch of her arms over her head. Today, she'd eschewed Tish's advice and stuck with her more sensible uniform of blue jeans paired with a wine-coloured top, and didn't have to worry too much about it being improper to roll about on a blanket. "Not that it's not exciting learning about new things, but there's a certain thrill to living things you've only ever read about in books before."

The Doctor smiled placidly over at Martha from where he was sprawled beside her. They'd had a pleasant enough meal, although it had been mostly quiet -- Not out of awkwardness, but in reverence to the beauty of the place. He'd not told her, but he was pleased that she'd worn such familiar clothes this time. The last had been beautiful, of course, but this managed to make him feel almost as if things were back to the way they ought to be.

"There are other pasts, off of Earth," he pointed out, watching her as she watched the sky.

"You know what I meant."

"Yes, I do. It's why we're here and not on another planet."

Martha diverted her attention from the darkening sky to blink curiously back at the Doctor. "Really?"

"Really. Thought you might prefer something new, but still familiar."

"You're familiar." The warmth of the setting sun lingered in the ground and on her skin, and her smile was drowsy, sated. It did him good to see it, even if it sent his mind off in inappropriate directions.

"But not new."

"Mmm, maybe." Martha rolled over onto her side to face him, propping her head up on her hand. "You never fail to surprise me."

"I get that a lot. Have I convinced you to come back yet?" His tone was casual, despite the fact that they both knew the question wasn't.

"Still beating that horse, are you?" Martha quipped, but she was in such a contented, generous mood that it sounded more like a flirtation than a chastisement.

"It's not dead yet." Her skin looked like buffed bronze in the last light of the setting sun, and he wanted badly to touch her, to smooth his hands over every inch of her, to memorize each curve and sinew. There was still something guarded in her expression, however, and he didn't feel confident enough to try even another kiss much less a more involved seduction.

"Hypothetically," Martha began again, the little twist to her mouth making it clear that neither of them believed there was anything hypothetical about it. "If I was to say I'd consider it, what would you do to convince me?"

"Aside from take you on fabulous dates and follow you around like a puppy?"

Martha smiled, and then ducked her head with a low chuckle.

"Or showing you one of my most cherished memories?" he added, reaching to brush the hair back from her cheek.

"Or snogging me in the middle of it?" She grinned.

"Nah, that was just a bonus," the Doctor replied, and smiled back at her. "I thought you liked it. You felt like you liked it, anyhow."

"I did."

"Come back, I'll do it again."

Martha laughed and slipped down onto her back again without further answer. The sky was royal blue, stars standing out like diamonds. A memory hit her without warning ( _The skies are made of diamonds!_ ), and she sighed, feeling momentarily weighted again with the fate of the Earth, of the universe. It wasn't a responsibility that one human should ever be made to bear alone, and even now she didn't know how to lay it down.

"Martha." The Doctor's voice was quiet but steady. Slowly, she turned to hold him in her heavy gaze. "I'm sorry," he added, almost a whisper.

"It was worth it, wasn't it?" she asked, searching his face for answers. "In the end."

"Yes," he replied, and swallowed roughly around the knowledge that right there and then, laying with Martha Jones under starlight and seeing how she ached, he wished he could take it all back. "You did well, Martha." He wanted to promise her that if she came back, he'd never let her endure anything like that again, but the truth was he couldn't be sure, and she'd likely do it regardless, as she was just that sort of woman.

Quietly, decisively, she canted her head and regarded him in the failing light. "Come here."

After a moment's hesitation, he did as she asked and shifted closer, enough so that he could feel the maddening warmth of her body through the fabric of his suit. The situation was both exhilarating and unnerving for him, as he couldn't tell whether he was about to get laid or handed an ultimatum. Propped up beside her, gazing down into wide brown eyes that were far too calm, he was absolutely terrified. At some point, she'd gotten under his skin, and he'd become invested. He wasn't certain he could take losing her the way he had Rose, and it was taking everything within him to not bolt for the TARDIS without looking back.

Martha, however, had never been afraid to direct him. Not when he was a Time Lord, not when he was a human, and even as precarious as their current situation was, she wasn't afraid to do so now, either. Gently, she pulled him down to her by the back of the neck, and while the last kiss was good, this one was better. They were each more confident, more aware, and more receptive. There was more clarity to the moment, too, and it wasn't perfect, but it was damned close.

One kiss became two, which became a series, heated but not hasty, a slow, purposeful exploration of each other on both their parts. The Doctor very much would have liked to undress her, to lay her naked under starlight and – God help him – make love to her, to make things better any way he could, to at last do something bloody right with Martha Jones. But Martha Jones was a pragmatic young woman, not one given to fits of mindless passion, and when his hand began to stray beneath the hem of her shirt and upwards over the toned lines of her abdomen, she stopped him. It wasn’t that she was uninterested; he could see that well enough. It was a restraint born of uncertainty, of a need to have this on her terms. They’d done things on his terms for so long, he couldn’t blame her.

The temperature was rapidly dropping, and they wouldn’t have too much longer before it was too cool for them to lay about outside. The Doctor was determined to make what he could of the little time left them, however, and kept Martha close, their limbs entwined, shared breath marked by the occasional languid kiss.

“Come back,” he repeated, tugging her closer by the hips. Martha bit her lip with a slight hitch of her breath. “Please,” he added, trailing manipulative kisses down the length of her throat.

“This isn’t fair,” she replied, but her protest sounded weak.

“All’s fair in love and war, Martha,” he murmured, and tipped his head up to nip once at her chin. “Come back.”

It was a saying; common, possibly overused. Yet the sound of the L-word on the Doctor’s lips sent her stock still, previously relaxed muscles suddenly tense with uncertainty. While the Doctor noticed the change straight away, it took him a moment to ascertain the cause, at which point he made quite a show of working his mouth like a fish out of water – Saying nothing and looking incredibly discomfited. Disappointed and annoyed, Martha shoved him aside and sat up.

“Martha,” the Doctor managed at last, a plea as he pushed himself up beside her.

“The answer is no,” Martha replied, chin held aloft and eyes on the watercolored horizon in a forced show of solidarity.

The Doctor hissed out an exasperated sigh. “You were going to say yes,” he accused.

“No I wasn’t,” Martha insisted without looking to him.

“Yes you were.”

“No I wasn’t.”

 

“Yes you were, and then I went and buggered it up by saying one bloody word. It’s just a word, Martha. Nothing’s changed between a moment ago and now.” The Doctor reached to rub against Martha’s closest shoulder, but was immediately sorry for it when she reeled on him, eyes alight with slow burning fury.

“It is not just a word,” she insisted in a carefully-measured tone. “And you know it. Mean it or don’t, but don’t you dare toy with me by telling me it means nothing.”

One step forward, two steps back. That was always the way with her, a perpetual battle to prove himself, to give his apologies the proper weight. It was exhausting.

The Doctor scrubbed a hand over his face and up into his hair with a weary sigh. “I give up,” he said, and lifted his gaze to Martha’s incensed expression. “I’m trying, here, Martha, but nothing I do is good enough.”

Predictably, that was the wrong answer.

“Oh no,” Martha replied with a firm shake of her head. “You’re not going to turn this around on me. I shouldn’t be feeling guilty. You’re bloody well right it’s not good enough! You don’t toss around that word with me when you know I’m in love with you!”

So many times it had been implied, but that confession came as a shock to both the Doctor and Martha herself, who sat stunned at her own impetus and looking a bit as if she would like to sink into the ground.

“I mean-“ she began with an errant flip of one wrist, an effort to save face, but the Doctor stopped her.

“Don’t,” he said, gently. Martha dropped her gaze, and perhaps it was easier to make admissions without those wide brown eyes fixed on him, because he found himself compelled to continue. “I meant it.”

After hesitating the length of a tense breath, Martha tipped an uncertain gaze back up to him. “What?” she asked, although he could see well enough she’d understood him.

The Doctor swallowed audibly. “The implication.”

Martha remained undeterred. “Of?”

Why should one word be so bleeding difficult to say? He’d just said it a moment ago, after all, and all right, maybe the context was different, but it was just a word. He’d said so himself. Just a word… with the power to make them both starkly and irrevocably vulnerable. The Doctor wasn’t certain he could physically make himself utter it, in spite of what he was feeling.

“You’re braver than I am,” he confessed instead with a self-deprecating chuckle and drop of his gaze. “Always have been.”

“That’s not an answer,” Martha replied, although her tone was gentler, threaded through with sympathy.

“I know.”

Silence sprung up between them, filling the little distance and making it seem heavy. It was only eighteen and a half seconds before Martha broke it, but it had felt an age.

“Yes,” she said, decisively, and nothing more. The Doctor peered curiously up at her.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Yes… what?” the Doctor asked, feeling once again that he’d missed one of her maneuvers. He wasn’t terribly good with subtlety.

“Yes, I’ll come back,” Martha clarified, and while there was the slightest wisp of exasperation in her tone at having to be to patently obvious, her expression was mild.

The Doctor blinked once, and then again. “You’ll…” Another blink. “You will?” That was unexpected, and he couldn’t imagine what he’d done to go from being in the proverbial dog house to getting what he wanted. Of course, Martha was a woman, and they were confusing, regardless of species.

“I will,” Martha confirmed, and smiled just enough to demonstrate that she was serious. “It’s getting cold out here,” she added, dropping easily into a less obtuse subject. “I’ll get everything else gathered if you’ll get the blanket.”

Confusing or not, the Doctor couldn’t have been more pleased with the change of events. Beaming at Martha, he reached to pull her forward into a celebratory snog before she became too busy getting the dinner dishes sorted, but found himself stopped by an insistent palm to the middle of his chest, puckered lips hovering a scant few inches from hers.

“No,” Martha warned, as if he were a misbehaving puppy.

“But…” the Doctor began, petulant and confused as he watched her go about placing items into their picnic basket.

“No,” Martha repeated without looking back to him.

“You’re incredibly confusing, do you realize that?” the Doctor shot back, although he’d resigned himself to the decision and was pushing himself to his feet.

“That may well be,” Martha absently answered as she stood and swept up the basket with both hands. “But for now the answer is still no.”

“For now..?” the Doctor choked out as Martha began to stride purposefully back to the TARDIS. He was beyond frustrated but had to admire her staunch refusal to relinquish the upper hand.

“Don’t forget the blanket!” she called back to him, glad enough that he couldn’t see her smile.


End file.
